The Winds of Crowns and Wolves (9 page)

This book, which spoke to him, assisted him.
But surely that had to be his imagination? No one in their right
mind could believe that this book had actually formed words and
cast them at Neach. It must have been intuition, or maybe he was
really crazy.

One thing which he could not work out as
purely mentally conceived fiction was his interaction with the girl
in the marketplace. As he lay motionless on the cold ground beneath
that fruit bearing tree, thoughts of her danced around his head. He
closed his eyes and her soft skin was brushing against his arm. She
curled into him and embraced him beneath that tree. Fortunately for
Neach, this thought would have to do for the night. There was
nothing else which would come to his side at this time and he could
only comfort himself with his own thoughts.

The night seemed to pass by in an instant
and Neach was awoken by the brightness of the rising sun in the
distance. Surprisingly, he wasn’t cold when he awoke. Instead, he
was filled with the warmth of adventure as he set off with his
horse in the direction of the mountains which were located
northward.

Rine had fallen asleep a few feet away from
where Neach was and was standing, attached to the tree when Neach
opened his eyes. This majestic creature was now under Neach’s
supervision and he hoped he could do it justice. He had never owned
a horse before; it was seen as unnecessary in his community where
everyone owned plots which were manageable on foot.

He wandered toward the horse and rubbed its
back gently as a sign of affection. The horse sighed in response
and its body shook with a violent tremor. A signal that it was
ready to set off again, Neach hoisted himself upward onto Rine’s
back and adjusted his position.

Up ahead there was lengthy patch of flat
land with sporadic trees spread throughout it. In congruence with
the flowers that speckled the, now devoid of snow, ground, these
trees served as the tangible reminders that even in perpetual
flatness, inconsistencies arise. Nothing can remain untouched
forever.

Neach gently urged Rine forward and the two
slowly galloped through the field. The sun was shining bright to
his left and it felt warm on his back.

It was a picturesque scene; a man on his
horse riding through the beautiful fields of Duncairn. If it had
been painted in that instant, it surely would have been included in
the halls of the great artwork of the time. Majestic and iridescent
in front of the rising sun, the two creatures came to a crescendo
of speed as they whisked through the trees.

There was something innate which gave Neach
the ability to ride Rine so swiftly. Effortlessly guiding him left
and right, avoiding trees by the narrowest of margins, his spirit
felt free. Everything he had ever known seemed to vanish into the
air and what was left a colorful burst of nothingness, which
embraced him with the passion of a thousand happy souls.

They glided along the plane with the
mountains fixated in the foreground; their snow covered peaks
loomed over the flatland like a giant peering into a community of
ants. With all that had occurred within the last day, Neach
couldn’t be bothered to worry about the impending trek; all that he
filled his mind with were thoughts of the beauty of the day and the
beauty of the girl he had met the day before.

Seemingly stuck in perpetuity into his
brain, this girl whose name he did not know, who had waltzed into
his life freely, was now off wandering the streets of Leirwold,
unsure of whether the two would ever meet again.

His thoughts wandered back to home.

Back to the valley which he used to inhabit,
free of all worry except the next day’s work, the work which had
been done for thousands of years on that land by generations of
hard working men, the work his brother and father would currently
be doing. He missed it, but he did not yearn for the village, for
his destiny lay somewhere at the foot of the mountains in the
distance or just beyond their snowy peaks. Unsure of his ultimate
destination yet hell bent on reaching it, Neach kicked Rine with
the back of his foot once more, lurching forward with the speed of
an angry sparrow. They seemed to be flying through the wilderness,
hurdling unencumbered through the wooded expanse.

As a cool wind blew across his face, Neach’s
eyes watered and he closed them momentarily. In the darkness of his
own thoughts, vivid visions of color and wonder permeated his every
line of sight. He opened them again to see the mountains in front
of him getting closer and closer with every passing second. The
trees had seemingly disappeared and all that was left was a patch
of dead grass.

The closer he got to the mountains, the more
evident the path located on its face was. A road which appeared to
have been carved out by travelers over hundreds of years stuck out
definitively against the snow covered top of the mountain. Neach
followed it with his eyes back down to the base of the mountain and
aimed his direction toward it.

He pulled on Rine’s reigns as the two came
to a slow trot. Stopping just in front of the entrance to the path,
Neach gazed up at the massive mountain which sat before him. In
order to get to the elusive man on the island, Neach would need to
scale the side of this mountain and make his way over it to the
other side; and so his journey began, slowly galloping along the
beginning of the twisting rocky outline.

The cascading cliffs provided a rough angle
in contrast with the flat plain below. Careening sides outlined the
mountain as if it were a line of rain fallen around a place of
cover. The distinction between rock and grass, harsh and pastoral,
was distinct and prevalent as Neach and Rine traveled slowly up the
jagged path that led, in a spiraling manner, up the sheer face of
the peak. Transitioning ever so smoothly from fertility to absolute
desolation, the convergence of mountain and field acted as a
tangible aesthetic of the inner feelings that Neach himself felt
about the situation in front of him.

He was headed for an unknown land, far in
the distance which he had never heard of nor seen before. On the
good faith of Daniel and the message he hoped lay within the Yoriik
Riamendi.

An absurd name for a text, or in reality,
anything in the scope of the world, this text was said to hold the
answers that Neach so desired. It would be his greatest teacher, as
well as, his most profound source of intellect along the journey.
He hoped that he would gain a greater consciousness after the
experience, but as it is frequently in life, he could not be
sure.

The boy and his horse had been travelling
for a period that could not have been longer than twenty minutes
when a sudden chill overtook the area of the path which they found
themselves on. Rine reared to a halt as they reached a clearing
about halfway up the mountain.

It looked as if someone had cut the top of
this peak of the mountain off and sanded it down, treating it as
though it were a sword to a whetstone. Its flat surface was so well
leveled that a bashful individual may have been able to see his own
reflection in the glasslike rock.

A gust of wind blew in from the south as
Neach and Rine both seemed to shiver from the vigor of the
travelling air. Silent and still in the clearing on the hill, Neach
dismounted Rine, as he thought that this would prove a good place
to cease the journey for the time being.

Almost immediately after he left the saddle
atop Rine’s back, a new burst of cold air hit him directly in the
face, causing him to lurch backward toward the rock wall behind
him. His eyes had closed momentarily, and when he opened them, what
was now in front of him struck fear into the darkest chasms of his
soul.

Standing in front of himself and his horse
was a beast unlike anything he had ever seen before.

With eyes a piercing green, more vibrant
than the fields below him, and teeth that resembled sharpened
jewels glistening in the midday sunlight, this beast resembled a
human, if not only in its facial structure.

All elements of humanity had disappeared
from its flesh as in its place there stood a myriad of differently
shaped and lengthened pieces of ice. It was as if a stalactite had
been reified into being by a demented witchdoctor, only for that
very witchdoctor to lose control of its creation and have it end up
on this very mountain.

Frozen both literally and figuratively by
fear, Neach breathed heavily, and as it came out, it crystallized
into a cloud in front of his mouth. Incapacitated and unsure of
what his next move should be, he remembered the book which had
helped him mount the horse earlier.

His first reaction was to attempt to make a
connection with it as he had earlier, purely through his brain.
Unfortunately, he was in such shock from the events unfolding
before him that he was unable to muster the focus or energy to
mechanize the book’s powers in his favor.

In the secluded world of Spleuchan Sonse,
things were organized and well intentioned. Deviance from the
normalized culture was not prevalent and your day to day life from
birth until demise would be set forth by your elders. In this new
world Neach found himself in, a new motif would materialize before
his very eyes: spontaneity.

To think on your feet is to remove all cost
benefit analyses from the equation. A clearing of the mind and a
resolute attempt to allow your body to reach equilibrium before
hurling it waist deep into the dark abyss of water below. The mind
is most at peace before the most decisive of actions.

And so, as Neach took his next few steps,
any reservations about what may have happened were thrown over the
edge of the cliff, as he assumed his body would follow suit in the
near future.

A side-step to his right saw him narrowly
avoid a flying shot of ice directed with one intention: to kill.
Rine had run himself behind a rock covering at this point and Neach
was all but completely exposed to the beast in front of him.

In its anger, and with a fervent swing, the
icy beast rushed forward and attempted to impale Neach on his left
arm. Any ounce of humanity which may have been left in this
abomination of a creature was surely gone at this point, and the
unlawful nature of a beast had taken its place completely.

With a swing and a thrust of its arm, it
glanced Neach’s right shoulder as he bounded leftward in an attempt
to avoid the impending destruction. Having narrowly avoided two
attacks from the beast, Neach now lay on the rock floor with blood
seeping through his top. A small cut had been opened up on his
right shoulder and the crimson color of the blood was now becoming
apparent through the fabric that lay atop it.

His movement leftward had placed him closer
to his knapsack than he had initially known. It was within arm’s
reach and he did what he believed was his only option at this point
in time. With the icy beast closing in on him, Neach removed the
Toriik Riamendi from his ragged knapsack and attempted to read the
first few lines that were present in the beginning of its
bowels.

“Rusteh firgilli dur Ergawah,” he began.

Suddenly, the beast stopped in its current
location.

Bewildered at both his ability to read the
words on the page and the reaction that the beast exhibited in
return, Neach continued to espouse the remaining words on the first
entrance in the text.

“Guud polliwus dur Bewwin Wimlo,” he
continued, “arg newa dur Civve Ghul.”

As he concluded his diatribe directed toward
the icy beast, now retracting its footsteps and moving further away
from Neach as he lay on the ground, he realized the power that was
held within the words that he now harnessed the ability to read. It
appeared as if even the first entrance in the Toriik Riamendi was
an incantation of sorts, but what did it mean?

Before that question could be answered,
Neach saw the color disappear from the beast’s eyes.

What were once tangible emeralds, sat far
back in the sockets of this icy beast, now sat as uncut onyx. A
mere shell of the potency they once exhibited, its irises were
rendered nearly nonexistent. As the color drained, the ice began to
melt from its skin.

In a calamity of both terror and joy, Neach
watched as the icy beast was reduced to a heap of sand atop that
plateau, whisked away swiftly by the careening winds that traveled
across the face of the mountain.

It took quite some time for Neach’s heart to
cease palpitating. By this time, he had slid himself up against the
rock wall which Rine was shuddering behind. He sat up and began to
construct a viable explanation for what had just occurred over the
last few minutes.

A beast, the likes of which he had never
seen, attempted to kill him as he scaled the side of this mountain.
Unsure of the implications this held, Neach could do nothing but
pant for air as he and his horse rested for a few moments.

The majority of Neach’s energy had been
sapped from his body after the encounter. The reading of the
passage from the beginning of the sacred text that Daniel had given
him seemed to have removed every ounce of motivation he had
contained within his own frail body over the past week.

Unfortunately, the journey had to continue.
Neach had planned on reaching the other side of the mountain that
day and hoped that he could reassess his situation once this
destination was reached. The sun was still high in the sky, though
it had started its descent downward. He figured that he had at
least another seven hours of sunlight before travel would be
rendered impossible.

And so, after the draining encounter, Neach
mounted his horse and set off at a slow trot up the path toward the
peak of the mountain.

The chill which had plagued the two weary
travelers was now nonexistent. Heat returned to Neach’s body, and
so too did his energy. After just a few minutes on the path, Neach
felt that he was nearly back to full strength. This added to the
complex and confusing nature of what had occurred only minutes
before.