Chapter 19

Morning brought a woman with pure white skin, like chalk, and light gray eyes. She was dressed in clothes made of marmot skins, and looked comfortable in the mountain air.

“Seeker,” she said, and pointed to a young man with a broken front tooth.

“Great Lady,” he replied.

“Why have you come here?”

“To establish my honor, and defend my people, Great Lady.”

“And what boon shall I give you, should you prove worthy?”

“A sword like my forefathers, Great Lady.”

She nodded, and Mato thought he saw a hint of sadness in her eyes.

“Follow,” she said, and they disappeared into the cave.

* * *

“It will take about three days for all of them to get a turn,” Ezhno said. They were about three clips east of trials. Ostensibly they were hunting, but Ezhno had only killed two marmots so far, and there had been several opportunities for others.

“What do we do during that time?” Mato asked.

“We appear to hunt,” Ezhno said. “This is a place where all trail masters go. In Abo any hidden treasure might be found. Here, we have greater safety.”

They walked uphill for a few more paces, and then around a tall rock embedded in the mountainside. There Ezhno found a hole, partially covered by scrub. He promptly went into it headfirst, feet sticking up as he squirmed through.

“Follow.”

The entrance was tight. At the bottom of the hole there was just enough room to right himself, and by feeling around he found another passage just above head height. He pulled himself up and wormed through, then let himself down into a room.

Ezhno’s tiny lantern flickered to life, and Mato could see that it really was a room. The floor and ceiling were flat, and there were four walls. There was a table carved into the back wall, shelves for four men to sleep, and stacks of some sort of hard, waxy material.

“What is this?”

“Pemican. You can eat it like that, but it is better cooked into a stew or broth. It keeps for years, and we like to have a bit on hand. Sometimes there is not enough food for the journey, and we can take a bit to help the seekers. Our journey has been easy, so we will leave our cakes here for the next cohort.”

He pulled four of the hand-size blocks from his belt pouch and added them to the supply on the shelf. Then he went to the table and lay on the floor.

“Here, Mato.”

There were scrolls hidden underneath. Dozens of them. Some very old, some new, most in between.

“This is what we know of the true history of our people,” Ezhno said. “This knowledge is worth our lives. We never give this up. Not to save ourselves, not to save someone else. For centuries Sotsona and his priests have been altering our story. Every generation the Abo look better and better.

“You have been taught that we lived in the mountains, and that we were driven out by the Aret. We were farmers and shepherds, and they descended on us with swords and bows and shields. We did not know how to fight, and by the time we learned, there were too few of us left to defend our land.

“The truth is that the Abo were once plains people. We live in the grasses on the far side of the mountains, and we fought the Aret and drove them away. We wanted the plains and the grazing animals for ourselves.

“For generations we held the plains, but there was always conflict along the border. Eventually the Aret began to push us back--we do not know why.

“We thought to stay in the mountains, to build our strength and recover the plains, but the Aret had learned from us too well. They continued to push, until the last of the Abo were driven into the salt.”

Mato unrolled one of the old scrolls and scanned the words. There was a bit more detail there than Ezhno was offering, and there were drawings of great animals bigger than oxen, some with enormous tall necks. Great cats, and creatures that looked like small, black mountain men.

“Are you saying it was our own fault we were driven out?”

Ezhno sighed. “These are things from hundreds of years past. Fault seems of little value now. Who knows whose fault it was? Likely it was a king on our side who refused to compromise with a king on their side. There would be plenty of blame to go around.”

“You talk about Sotsona as if he has been alive all this time.”

Ezhno considered before answering. “When Sotsona is old, he selects the wisest of his sons to succeed him. In this process, he passes his wisdom on to his heir. At least, this is what the priests tell us.”

“You don’t believe them?” Mato asked.

“I know enough to doubt. I want you to look through these scrolls. While you do that, I will hunt. In a few hours I will return for you. If I fail to return, close up the entrance hole to this room--the block slides. You can’t push or pull it. Then return to the cohort.”

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Mato looked from the scrolls to his teacher. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ezhno said.

* * *

The trail masters had accumulated knowledge of runes and glyphs well beyond the selection taught by the priests. They had over two hundred glyphs, with names for about half, and notes on behavior for over sixty.

There were nearly five hundred runes, once again with names for a hundred or so, and behavior notes for nearly two hundred. Many of those were extremely brief, like ‘do not pair with ice.’

His first rune, given by Leelee, was called warrior. It had several notes.

“Do not pair with any of the following glyphs: warrior, death, fire, time.

“Forms a weak pairing with: echo -- allows one to see without sight.

“Forms a strong pairing with: shadow -- your blade’s shadow can strike enemies.”

There was also a section on pairings:

“Weak pairings offer observable effects. A pyre rune paired with a gateway glyph can light candles or torches from a few feet away. Badly unbalanced.

“Moderate pairings offer useful effects. A pyre rune with a fire glyph will set most creatures ablaze. Unbalanced.

“Strong pairings offer impressive effects. A pyre rune and a giant glyph will launch a fireball for hundreds of paces.

“Potent pairings are easily identified during formation. They glow briefly as the pairing sets. A pyre rune plus a thunderbolt glyph can blast through several feet of stone. Unbalanced.

“Mighty pairings glow faintly throughout their lifetime. A pyre rune opposite a sun glyph allows the wielder to summon a beam of light that scours the field of enemies. Friends are spared. Badly unbalanced.

“Transcendent pairings glow brightly. A pyre rune on a transformation glyph allows access to all of the above behaviors, and possibly more. Very badly unbalanced.

“Individual runes appear to have inherent power levels. The pyre rune is rarely seen, but offers powerful combinations. The gloom rune is often seen, but does not appear to have anything better than weak pairings.”

Mato went over that section several times, committing it to memory. His class on runes and glyphs had recommended pairing the pyre rune with the fire glyph. Instinctively this made sense, but the trail master scrolls didn’t mention that pairing.

He looked through scroll after scroll, and ultimately found it in one of the newer scrolls. “The priests have taken to recommending pyre plus fire. This is a moderate pairing that allows the wielder to project a bolt of fire for twenty paces or more. While powerful, it is far from the best pairing for this rune. See the entries for pairing strength and rarity by Holona.”

Another interesting fact. It seemed there had been at least one female trail master. He needed to ask Ezhno about that.

* * *

Ezhno had killed a pair of mountain goats. Mato wondered how he had managed to get both of them back to the lore entrance. One of them was about as much as Mato could manage, and there weren’t any obvious drag marks on the mountainside.

The camp was glum. Nine seekers had taken their trials, and only four had passed.

“This is ill news,” Ezhno whispered as he cleaned one of the mountain goats. “Typically there will be two or three failures per cohort, and we already have five. Be very careful about what you say and who you expose your back to.”

The successful seekers ate first, and received the best cuts. The priests went next, then Ezhno. After that the seekers were served, then Mato, and finally the failures. The cuts left over for Mato and the failures were grim, mostly bits of gristle.

In the morning two of the failures were missing. Ezhno offered to search for them, and Tupi told him not to bother.

* * *

The second day was much the same. They prepared what food they had, shared it with the seekers, then went out to hunt.

Ezhno let Mato read for a couple of hours. While Mato read, Ezhno engraved a little plaque with Mato’s name on it. This was added to the group of trail masters who knew the secret lore.

Then they went to hunt.

“Look!” Ezhno said, pointing uphill to the north.

Mato looked. There was nothing there. Just shrubs and grasses waving in the breeze.

Except.

Some of the grasses looked different than the others.

“Come. Those are honey worms.”

Honey worms turned out to be a cross between a worm and a bee. They burrowed in the ground and had long, pink bodies. They also had a nasty sting for anything that disturbed their nest.

Ezhno rushed to the edge of the worm’s territory, and Mato took position to his right. The nearest worm struck at him, like a snake, but with a single sharp barb instead of fangs. Mato stepped back, decapitated the worm, and felt something strike him in the back of his right calf.

The agony nearly grounded him. Tears flooded his eyes, and his leg locked up. He managed to stagger around only to see Ezhno finish that worm.

He turned back to the hive and swung his sword just in time to stop two more strikes. Then another hit him in his left side. He fell, and more hit him in the head, shoulders, and body.

Darkness.

* * *

“Come on, Mato. Drink up,” Ezhno said.

Mato felt a hand grip his jaw, then water drizzled into his mouth. Knowing what it was, he did his best to swallow.

His head hurt. When he tried to breathe his lungs made horrible whistling noises. He tried to reach down and scratch his leg, only to find that his armpit was swollen like a woman’s breast.

Ezhno put paste on each of his fourteen stings, and made him drink ten cups of healing water. They filled all four of their water skins with worm honey, and both of their shade cloths as well. The shade cloths leaked the whole way back, but there was still some honey left for the seekers.

“You look horrible,” Tupi said.

“Mumph phiss hutts,” Mato said.

Tupi turned to Ezhno.

“He says his face hurts, which is strange, because his face is about the only place he didn’t get stung.”

Tupi sniffed. “Worm honey?”

“Indeed,” Ezhno smiled.

Honey worms made a thick goo from prey above and below the surface. It tasted like the gravy from the grill after frying mushrooms and fatty meat.

Every seeker got a few spoonfuls to put in a water skin, and then they shook the skin to blend the honey with water. What was left was a satisfying broth. For the first time in several days the entire cohort went to sleep with full bellies.

Not only that, ten of the seekers had completed their trials, and nine had passed.