And so it was on the fourth day of their travels together, when the ranger announced that he would leave as they set their camp, that a pall came over the caravan.
“Bah, you should not be so despairing,” Andacanavar told them. “I will show you a road to the Barba” He stopped and caught himself, giving a wry grin. “If that is where you are going, I mean,” he added slyly.
“I cannot confirm,” Master Jojonah put in, and he, too, was grinning. He had full confidence in Andacanavar now, had seen the man’s heart and knew it to be akin to his beliefs. Of course the man knew where the monks were headingwhere else would someone go this far into the Wilderlands?
“A road straight and sure,” the ranger went on, “and, if you are not finding any powries or giants blocking the way, you will get there, and soon enough.”
“By my maps, our destination is many, many miles from Alpinador’s western border,” Brother Francis remarked, his tone toward the ranger more respectful now. “We have a long road ahead of us, I fear.”
Andacanavar held out his hand, and Brother Francis turned over the parchment, a map of the immediate region. The ranger lifted an eyebrow as he considered it, for it was quite detailed and fairly accurate.
“Your maps are telling you true,” Andacanavar agreed. “But we put Alpinador’s western border behind us before we set camp the night before the last. So take heart, my friends, for you are almost therenot that I would be taking heart if I was heading into the place where the demon is said to roost!” He bit the tip of one finger then, and with his blood drew another line on the map, the road to the Barbacan, ending it with an X to mark their present location.
He handed the map back to Francis, and with that, and a final bow, Andacanavar left them, running into the underbrush, laughing all the while.
“Were it not for his stature, I’d think him an elf,” Brother Braumin remarked. “If there were such a creature as an elf.”
Andacanavar’s last words concerning their present position came as a relief to offset the monks’ sadness at losing their most excellent guide. They ate their evening mealwonderful venison againsaid evening prayers and slept well, then were on the road again, anxiously, before the next dawn.
The land remained ruggedless mountainous, but more heavily forested. Still, using the blood line on the map as a guide, the monks soon came upon a wide and clear road, not just a narrow trail. All wagons stopped there, with the caravan’s leaders going out to investigate.
“This swath was cut by the monstrous army on their march to the south,” Master Jojonah reasoned.
“Then backtracking it should get us right to the source of the monstrous army,” said Brother Braumin.
“A dangerous course,” remarked Brother Francis, looking all about. “We are in the open.”
“But a swift course, no doubt,” Brother Braumin replied.
Master Jojonah thought about it for only a short while, considering most of all that Andacanavar had put them on this trail. “Have the spirit scouts out far and wide,” he instructed. “Both our wagons and our horses could use the reprieve of a smooth road.”
Brother Francis put every quartz and hematite to use, sending monks out far and wide for fear that they were riding right into an enemy encampment.
Two days later they had still not encountered a single monster, though they had put a hundred miles and more behind them. Now before them they saw the towering mountains that ringed the Barbacan, and all the monks feared they would have a terrible time indeed in getting the wagons through those barriers.
But the road continued on, to the base of the mountains, and right up into the mountains, climbing through a wide pass. Setting a camp in that place was more than a bit disturbing, but again no monsters came forward to challenge them, and those monks with the quartz stones discovered that there weren’t many wild creatures about, either. The land seemed strangely dead, and eerily silent. By mid-morning of the next day the end of the mountains was in sight, with only a single ridge blocking their view beyond. Master Jojonah called for a halt, then motioned for Brothers Braumin and Francis to accompany him.
“We should go in spiritually,” Brother Francis noted.
It was a good suggestion, a prudent suggestion, but Master Jojonah shook his head anyway. He had a feeling that what lay ahead was incredibly important, and he felt that it should be viewed physically, both body and soul. He motioned the pair to his side, asked the other immaculates to join them, and started the climb.
The younger monks followed the group, not so far behind.
When Master Jojonah crossed the last barrier, coming to a point where he could view the wide valley that was the heart of the Barbacan, his spirits both sagged and soared. The monks filtered away from each other, hardly noticing each other’s movements, stunned by the scene, for the devastation looming before them was total. Where once had stood a forest, there was now a field of gray ash littered with charred logs. All the valley was gray and barren, and the air hung thick with the reek of sulfur. It seemed to them all a preview of the end of the world, or a premature glimpse of the place their Church defined as hell. Most shaken of all were the younger monks as they, too, came over the ridge, several crying out in despair.
But when that initial despair passed into a grim acceptance, other, more positive, thoughts found their way into every mind. Could anything have survived this blast? Perhaps their suspicions, their hopes, of a “beheaded” monstrous army were true, for if, as believed, the demon dactyl had called the Barbacan its home, if the demon dactyl had been here at the time of the explosion, then the demon dactyl was surely gone.
Even Brother Francis was too stunned to speak for a long, long time. Gradually he made his way back to Master Jojonah’s side.
“Can we take this scene of devastation as proof enough that the demon dactyl is destroyed?” the master asked.
Francis looked down into the ash-filled bowl. It wasn’t hard to discern the source of the explosion: a flat-topped mountain standing alone in the middle of the ash field, a thin line of smoke still wisping from its top. “I do not believe this to be a natural occurrence,” Francis said.
“There have been volcanoes before,” Master Jojonah countered.
“But at this critical time?” Brother Francis asked doubtfully. “Dare we hope that a volcano erupted at the precise moment we most needed its help, and at the precise location of the enemy leader?”
“You doubt divine intervention?” Master Jojonah asked. He sounded serious, though he, too, held great doubts. There were fanatics in the Order who seemed to expect God’s thumb to slip down from the heavens and squash the opponents of the Church at every turn; Jojonah had heard one young monk standing at the seawall of St.-Mere-Abelle during the powrie invasion invoking God repeatedly, literally calling out for that punishing thumb. Master Jojonah also believed in the power of God, but he thought of it as an analogy for the power of good. He believed that good would win out in the end of every great struggle, because, by its very nature, good was a stronger force than evil. He suspected that Francis held similar feelings on the subject, for, despite his other shortcomings, the man was a thinker, a bit of an intellectual, who always edged his faith with logic.
Francis eyed him slyly now. “God was on our side,” he said. “In our hearts and in the strength that guided our weapons, and surely in the magic that crushed our enemies. But this …” he said, opening his arms dramatically as he scanned the devastated valley. “This may have been the work of God, but it was precipitated by the hand of a godly man, or was the result of the demon dactyl’s overextending its call to the earth magic.”
“Likely the latter,” Master Jojonah replied, though he hoped differently, hoped that Brother Avelyn had played a part in this.
Brother Braumin, coming to join the pair, heard the last few comments and now stared long and hard at Brother Francis, surprised by the man’s reaction. He turned his perplexed expression to Master Jojonah, and his superior only smiled and nodded, for he was not quite as surprised. At that moment Master Jojonah discovered Brother Francis’ redeeming qualities and found that there might indeed be something about the man that he liked. He paused for a bit to silently wonder if Brother Francis might be steered in a new direction.
“Whatever happened here came from that mountain,” Brother Francis reasoned. “Mount Aida, by name.”
The other two looked at him curiously.
“That is what the Alpinadoran named it,” Brother Francis explained. “And indeed, that name corresponds to many old maps that I studied. Aida, the lone mountain within the ring, the lair of the demon.”
“It will not be easy to get to it,” Brother Braumin remarked.
“Could we have expected differently?” Brother Francis asked with a laugh.
Again the two others only looked to each other and shrugged. It seemed to them as if this explosion might have rid the world of the dactyl demon, and might have rid Brother Francis of a few internal demons, as well.
They let it go at that, though, taking Francis’ good mood as a blessing. They could only hope it would endure.
The journey across the ash field was not as difficult as they had feared, for though the gray stuff had settled thick in many places, it had been blown clear in many others. As they neared the mountain, the lead driver made a horrible discovery.
His cry brought the monks running, to find several bodies encased in ash, lying along the side of the twisting trail.
“Powries,” Brother Braumin explained, going over to examine them. “And a goblin.”
“And that one is … was, a giant,” said another monk, pointing ahead on the trail to a huge leg protruding from a berm of ash.
“So our enemies were here,” Master Jojonah noted.
“Were,” Brother Francis emphasized.
They went on to the very base of the mountain and ringed the wagons there. Master Jojonah instructed half of them to set the camp, the other half to begin a thorough search of the area, looking particularly for any way in, or up, the mountain. With torches and a single diamond in hand, a group of monks entered one winding cave that very night, snaking their way into Aida. They returned in less than an hour with news that the tunnel led to a dead end, the way blocked by a solid wall of stone.
“No doubt it traveled farther before the explosion,” Brother Dellman told Master Jojonah.
“Let us hope that not all of the tunnels have so collapsed,” Jojonah replied, trying to sound hopeful. In looking at blasted Aida, though, the monk had to temper his optimism.
Brother Dellman led his troupe into a second tunnel, and when that one again abruptly ended, the young monk, undaunted, headed into a third.
“He has promise,” Brother Braumin remarked to Jojonah as Dellman started off that third time.
“He has heart,” Master Jojonah agreed.
“And faith,” said the other. “Great faith, else he would not attack his tasks with such determination.”
“Is there any more determined than Brother Francis?” Master Jojonah reminded.
Both men looked over to Francis, who was busy marking some parchments, detailing the nuances of the Barbacan.
“Brother Francis, too, has faith,” Brother Braumin decided. “He just follows it down errant paths. But perhaps he will find a truer way; it seems as though his time with the honorable Alpinadoran did him well.”
Master Jojonah offered no reply, just sat staring at Francis. It did indeed seem as if some of Andacanavar’s jovial spirit had rubbed off on the man, but Jojonah wasn’t counting Francis as a convert just yet.
“Where do we search next if we find no tunnels open into the mountain’s heart?” Brother Braumin asked. “And if the flat top yields no valuable information?”
“Then we search with the hematite,” the master replied.
“I had thought we would do that first.”
Master Jojonah nodded, expecting as much, for he, too, had thought that the initial search of Aida would be more easily accomplished if the monks used the soul stones. He had changed his mind and their course, considering Brother Braumin’s experience with Andacanavar. Jojonah couldn’t be certain that the demon dactyl’s spirit wasn’t lingering about this place, and if the unmagical Alpinadoran could use such a spiritual connection to find his way into their midst, what might the demon dactyl do?
“Let us use our wits and our bodies,” the old monk replied to Braumin. “If they do not suffice, then we will utilize the soul stones.”
The younger man, trusting fully in Master Jojonah, was satisfied with that. “When will Brother Francis make contact with Father Abbot?” he asked.
“I bade him to wait until the morning,” Master Jojonah explained. “I do not think it prudent to open channels to one’s spirit in this forsaken place.”
That explained much to Brother Braumin, particularly concerning Francis’ fine mood, and he let the matter drop. He put a hand on Jojonah’s large shoulder, then walked off, for there was much work to be done.
After three hours the monks at camp began to grow nervous about Brother Dellman and the missing party. After four, Master Jojonah considered it might be time to put the hematites to use. He was about to give in and do just that when the monks scouting just west of the camp shouted that they saw torchlight.
Master Jojonah saw it soon after, a single monk exiting the tunnel in the foothills of Aida, moving with all speed back to the camp.
“Brother Dellman,” Braumin explained to Jojonah as the man came closer, running full speed down the slope, nearly losing his balance and pitching headlong more than once.
“Gather together, and ready for enemies!” Master Jojonah called.
The monks went into a practiced drill, handing off the appropriate stones to the appropriate wielders. Others strapped on weapons, or went to secure the horses.