Raven Son

CHAPTER TWO - The Pilgrim

The prince, beguiled by the aspen grove, sat down to sleep. A sleep that lasted three hundred twenty-seven years…

-From “The Sleeping-Wood” (Old Tales: Book I)

CHAPTER TWO

The PilgrimIt was a few hours after midday on the same day, as far as Voran could tell in the enormous dark of leaves. He walked in a direction he hoped would lead him back to known paths, but he still recognized few of the trees or hills. The undergrowth was so thick that Voran suspected he had stumbled on a true wildwood. He didn’t know there were any left in Vasyllia, for though there were few outlying villages outside the city proper, many Vasylli had been woodsmen in their time, and hardly an inch of copse, plain, or grove was undiscovered.

One thought niggled the back of his mind, where he tried in vain to keep it contained. It whispered that he was no longer in Vasyllia at all, that he had entered a different realm from the human. Though he had just encountered not one, but three legendary creatures, Voran was not yet ready to believe all the Old Tales to be true.

He stumbled out of the murk of oaks into the breathing space of an alder-grove. He was exhausted. Laying down his bow, quiver, and sword, he sat at the base of a young tree and leaned back.

He should be more worried about losing his way. His provisions were few, he had drunk all his water before midday, and poor Lebía would be frantic with worry. But he found he cared little for any of that. He was not even anxious to find Vasyllia. Nothing mattered so much as finding the Sirin, as hearing her song again.

A kind of echo of the music thrummed through him stronger than his own heartbeat. Whenever he stopped moving, everything around him moved with the rhythm of the Sirin’s song. The wind tossed the branches in her cadence; the birds chirped in unison. His own heart and breath began to move with it, until he thought he would go mad with its insistence.

It was not the music itself, he realized. It was the incompleteness of it. The Sirin had sung, but not to him. To the trees and the beasts, perhaps, to the summits and rivers, but not to his heart. The thought held a creeping dread. If her incomplete song had caused him to go half-mad, what would happen if she directed her song at him? Nevertheless, to contemplate the possibility of not hearing the song again terrified him, like a childhood dream of a parent’s death.

As for finding her, none of the Old Tales were particularly helpful. The Sirin were capricious, appearing in their own good time, in their own chosen place. You did not seek out the Sirin, they sought you out. But he had no intention of waiting patiently for the song to return. He needed to do something.

The stag. Somehow, the white stag and the Sirin were connected. He couldn’t exactly understand how, but it made sense on a level of intuition. The stag was of a different world, the world of the tales, the world that never encroached on everyday life. At least until today. If he found the stag again, perhaps it would lead him to the Sirin.

His heart accelerated. Why had he not considered it before? The Dar would have already gathered the hunting party to search for the stag. All of Vasyllia—rich third-reacher and poor first-reacher alike—would be lounging in pavilions and on wool blankets before the city, feasting and awaiting the return of the hunters. Perhaps they had caught the trail already? He must stop them at all costs.

He tried to jump up, but found that his limbs were not responding to the commands of his mind. His eyelids were heavy, his head drooped, hungry for sleep. What had come over him? He had hardly been out for half a day!

Then the realization speared him. He was stuck in a sleeping-wood. By the Heights, surely that old story wasn’t true as well?

Out of the corner of his vision, a hairy creature waddled toward him. He couldn’t move his head to see it clearly. He heard a porcine snuffle, though it was far too large to be a tree-pig. It stood up on two hind legs, growing in the process, all matted hair and dirt and encrusted leaves. It growled.

Something changed in the music of the grove. At first, Voran couldn’t place it, then he realized it was the birds. They no longer sang in rhythm to the Sirin’s song, but to another music, more somber and ancient. Every branch in his vision hopped with purple, red, golden, brown songbirds. There was even a firebird trilling on one of the larger branches. The hairy creature snuffled back into the oaks.

“You shouldn’t amble through these woods, young man. The Lows of Aer are not to be lightly entered. All manner of strange things are possible here.”

Voran strained to move his jaw, and realized that nothing held him in place any more. He jumped up so suddenly that the speaker took two alarmed steps back and raised a walking stick in warning.

“I’m sorry, master,” said Voran, eager to make amends. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No harm done, young man.” The voice was as harsh as rock grating on rock, though it had an uncanny melody. It oddly harmonized with the birdsong. “Tell me, what brings you to the Lows?”

The man’s face was wrapped in some coarse grey fabric, though a beard poked out of it here and there. He was a huge man, out-gaining Voran by at least a head, and Voran was of the warrior caste. Something about him suggested incredible age, but he moved confidently, like a young man. Voran urgently wanted to make friends with this strange man.

“I am lost. My name is Voran, son of Otchigen of Vasyllia.”

The man’s grey eyes flashed like the sun reflecting off new snow. “The son of Otchigen? You are far from home, young man. How long have you traveled, then?”

Something in the pit of Voran’s stomach twisted. “Only this day. I hunted the white stag.”

Voran expected the man to laugh, but instead he unwrapped his face, revealing a smile of recognition. Like the beard, the man’s entire face resembled carved stone.

“Ah, a fellow seeker. What good fortune. I am a Pilgrim, young Voran.”

Voran could not believe his luck. Pilgrims were unnamed wanderers who traveled all lands searching for the beautiful and the terrible. They were whispered to have a special grace of Adonais. Meeting a Pilgrim in the wild was more valued than catching a questing beast; hosting a pilgrim brought one’s family years of prosperity. Many a well-bred housewife would brave open war with her neighbors for the sake of a Pilgrim’s visit.

“Good fortune indeed, master! Where do your feet take you this day?” Voran hoped he remembered the correct traditional address to a Pilgrim from his seminary days.

“My feet go where they will, young Voran.” The Pilgrim bowed his head, acknowledging the formality gratefully. Voran’s shoulders relaxed. “But meeting you perhaps has indicated a surer path. You wish to return to Vasyllia? It will take a week, at least, if you take the usual paths.”

Voran’s mouth must have dropped open in shock, because the Pilgrim laughed—if harsh rock can be imagined to laugh—and tapped his chin with his stick.

“You meddled with the Powers, young man. No telling what sort of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“Pilgrim, what do you know of the Sirin?”

The Pilgrim stiffened in suspicion. “Why do you ask? Have you not been chastened enough for your curiosity?”

“Forgive me. It is just…I have seen a Sirin. I have heard her song.”

The Pilgrim’s eyebrows rose a fraction and his eyes widened a jot, but his body remained still. Voran imagined it took great effort to appear so little moved.

“White stag,” the Pilgrim murmured, more to himself than to Voran, “Sirin-song…Is it that time already?” He seemed to make up his mind about something, and now his gaze was firm. “Come, Voran, I will take you to Vasyllia a different way.”

Everywhere the Pilgrim went, holloways seemed to carve themselves through the trees. Where Voran saw nothing but trees, the Pilgrim picked out alleys between birches, passages through beeches, and doors through sage-brush. It was like the land belonged to him. As though seeing with new eyes, Voran was inundated with details of the forest he had never before bothered to notice, and he wanted to stop to breathe in the warm birch-smell, to pick out the male sparrow’s call from the female’s, to run his fingers through rain-soaked juniper for the joy of the sticky drops. But he had to run to keep up with the long strides of the Pilgrim.

“Pilgrim, what was that thing in the sleeping-wood? How did you scare it off?”

The Pilgrim stopped walking, turning to Voran. “That? Oh, nothing but a harbinger.” He smiled at something. “Things stir in the deepwoods. Things you Vasylli have not seen, or even heard of, for a very long time.”

He continued forward with even more determined tread.

“Voran, tell me something. While traveling, I have heard tales about your father. Are any of them true?”

The anger rose in Voran with the suddenness of nausea.

“Which tales, Pilgrim?” he asked, unable to hide the quiver of anger in his voice. “That he massacred innocent people? Or that he beat my mother, forcing her to run away from Vasyllia in a half-mad state?”

The Pilgrim stopped, abashed.

“Surely that is not what is said of Aglaia?”

Voran stopped in mid-stride. The Pilgrim had knowledge of his mother. The possibility made his heart run circles in his chest.

“Pilgrim, do you know what happened to my mother?”

The Pilgrim smiled, but did not answer the question.

“Voran, am I wrong to believe that you have never spoken of these things to anyone? Will you consider it brazen of a Pilgrim to ask your confidence?”

Voran’s mouth began speaking even before he gave it permission.

“There is no one I can confess to, Pilgrim. Lebía—my little sister—is still haunted by nightmares. She was only eight years old when we lost both our parents. The Dar is eternally sympathetic, but I don’t feel comfortable burdening him with personal worries. His daughter Sabíana, my…intended…” The heat rose in Voran’s cheeks. “Well, she is very protective of Lebía, and has a flinty nature. I find it better not to speak of it in her presence.”

The Pilgrim smiled knowingly. He pointed forward with his staff, offering Voran to continue speaking while they walked. Voran nodded, and they both walked forward as the carpet of fallen leaves rustled comfortably underfoot.

“Pilgrim, have you heard of the Time of Ordeal?”

“Who has not? Vasyllia’s warrior seminary is famed for it. Though I believe my knowledge of it to be several hundred years out of date.” He laughed, with a faraway look, as if remembering. Surely he was not that old. “Tell me, how many houses are still extant of the original seven?”

“Three remain. All three are segregated, as you know, coming together only for the training and vigils of the Ordeals. The gates of the seminary close, and no one is allowed in or out, not even with messages from family members. The Dar himself has no right to open the gates, except in times of war. The vigils, physical training, and period of intense contemplation are every bit as grueling as the tales have it.

“Eight years ago, I volunteered for the Ordeal of Silence four years before my allotted time. It’s a vow that few take, and hardly ever in their sixteenth year, but I sought out the opportunity with pleasure.”

“Voran, did you know that some of the oldest legends claim that the successful Ordeal of Silence fulfilled before its time is rewarded with a Sirin’s song?”

It explained a great deal. “No, Pilgrim. I did not.”

The Pilgrim’s smile was knowing. Chills ran down his spine. It was strangely pleasant.

“A week into the ordeal, my mother fell ill. None of the physicians understood it. There were lesions and bruises, and she just withered away. Then she disappeared. No note, no sign of departure, nothing. She just vanished. When I successfully finished the ordeal, the Otchigen I found was half the man he used to be. He had recently returned from a week of searching the wilds, but had found no sign of her. His state grew steadily worse, until I was forced to beg release from my studies, something I hated to do.

“Soon after, Father volunteered for a commission to Karila. There were unfounded rumors of nomad uprisings in far Karila, and it had led to a worsening of tensions between Vasyllia and Karila. He joined the garrison guarding a group of ambassadors who hoped to strengthen Karila’s ties to the throne of Vasyllia. I was against Father’s going from the start, but the Dar insisted. Said it would do him good.”

Through the haze of memory, Voran saw that he and the Pilgrim walked along a more recognizable path than before, and the aspens interspersed with pines hinted that they were coming nearer home.

“You never saw him again,” said the Pilgrim.

Voran nodded. He didn’t have the heart to speak of the murder of the ambassadors to Karila, or of his father’s assumed guilt in their murders.

“Voran, I thank you for your confidence. You may not understand yet why a Pilgrim would be so interested in your family history. I hope, when the trials begin, that you will find some solace in our shared confidence.”

Before Voran could answer, he was distracted by a white streak to his left. The stag.

The path turned sharply and led them to a bald patch in the wooded hills, where they entered open sunlight for the first time since leaving the sleeping-wood. The white stag walked toward them in a straight line. He stopped a foot in front of them, and Voran saw that there was a shimmer in the air between them. Voran touched it, and his hand could not pass through. A transparent wall.

“Never mind, old friend,” the Pilgrim said to the stag. “We have need of you after all.”

The deer raised his head and shook it. Snorting, he pawed the ground with a foreleg. The Pilgrim smiled at Voran.

“He’s annoyed with you. He would much rather remain in Vasyllia. Good country, he says, even if a bit on the forgetful side.”

Voran was dumbfounded. “Vasyllia is on the other side of that…transparent wall?”

The stag bowed as he had in the clearing, and the gold light from his antlers burst out. Voran raised an arm to his face, but the stag was already gone.

The mustiness of Vasyllia’s birches inundated Voran’s senses. He and the Pilgrim stood next to a saddle-shaped branch that Voran often slept on during the hot afternoons.

“The white stag is a bearer,” the Pilgrim explained, “a sort of…doorway. Between the worlds, you know. But to bear us to Vasyllia, he had to return to the Lows of Aer.”

Voran felt no more enlightened than before, but the Pilgrim only rumbled hearty laughter and strode uphill toward Vasyllia.

All of Vasyllia feasted before the gates. Close to the walls, rows of wedge-pavilions marked the families closest to the Dar’s regard, all from the third reach. Farther downslope, canvas tents flapped on sturdy frames. First and second-reacher families gathered around makeshift hearths. Heavy pots boiled over with stew. Carts pushed by pantalooned merchants wended their way among the feasters, regardless of social standing. In the midst of it all, a smaller replica of the market day stage had been built, and a storyteller had all the children in stitches, while their parents feigned seriousness, though most couldn’t hide their abashed smiles at the ribaldry their children didn’t catch.

On any other day, the spectacle would have cheered Voran. He loved a good pageant, as did any Vasylli. To see the entire city together like this, the reaches mingling, was a rare thing. And yet, something was lacking. Somehow, everything about Vasyllia now seemed half-empty, devoid of meaning.

The master bell roared in the palace belfry, announcing the return of the unsuccessful hunting party. Copper bells followed in syncopated chorus, beating in rhythm to the bay of the hunting dogs. Silver bells clamored in the rhythm of a thousand blackbirds.

“Pilgrim,” he said, straining to hear himself over the din of the bells, “Will you do my house the honor of staying with us while you visit Vasyllia?”

“Of course, Voran. I thank you for the offer.” His voice was more resonant than the bells. For a quick moment, Voran thought that the grey cloak and the stony visage were a kind of mask that the Pilgrim chose to assume for his own purposes, and that his real face was different. But the moment of intuition faded. Voran shook his head, befuddled.

The mountain city loomed before them, many-tiered and many-terraced. Its houses and streets hugged a sloping peak that curved upward like a saber to a pinnacle high above the mists. Amid the pines and spruces, the city of Vasyllia seemed to have grown from the mountains’ bones many ages ago. Towers were extensions of crags. Alleys, bridges, and archways were natural hollows and caves, gently bent to human will.

Something deep within the city compelled Voran. Not the Vasyllia built of wood, cobbled with stone, and planted in earth. No, that was little more than a mask, like the mask of the Pilgrim. The real city lay beneath it. For the first time in his life, Voran sensed there was something living, something vital in the heart of Vasyllia, something no one knew about or even suspected. The hidden Vasyllia whispered to him, though he could not parse out the words.

“You surprise me, young Voran,” said the Pilgrim. “How quickly you pierce to the heart of things. Whatever happens, my falcon, do not forget this. Vasyllia is everything. You must never let Vasyllia fall. She is everything.”