Where the Path Leads – Chapter 30

Forgotten About

To all who witnessed the Great Burning it felt like the world was coming to an end.

            Even though it was midday, the sky was darkened with smoke and the forest quickly caught fire from the ash and sparks. Later generations would say that it began when the dragon flew over Blackwood Forest spreading flames, enraged at the damage to the cypress tree. They would say the cypress was the dragon’s birth tree and that injury to the tree meant injury to the dragon. They would say the cypress branch later became the fabled staff of life—the only good to come from that awful event—carried by Arthur the Kind in his travels across Angleterra, healing the sick and helping people.

            But when it began, Emily’s main concern was getting away from the deafening explosions coming from the abyss as she and her companions fled the ruination with the help of Alpha Centauri. The blasts were almost more than human ears could bear and they sent waves of heat searing across the exposed faces, arms, and legs of the three. Acrid smoke burned in Emily’s throat and eyes and no talking was possible with the roaring between blasts.  So she let Annamund point the way.  She wasn’t sure where they were going, but finally she trusted and never once did she even recall the maddening tickle in her ear.

            Annamund brought them to the mouth of a tunnel which led to an underground cave where they might remain unharmed until the worst was over.  The Mistress of the Creatures, however, would not stay with them since she had to ensure the safety of the forest animals, staying only long enough to put salve made of comfrey and lavender on poor Athena’s burns and some on Arthur’s head where he’d fallen.  Before she took her leave of them, Annamund unaccountably plucked a single owl feather from Athena’s wing and gave it to Emily.

            “Keep it with you,” she said. “It will help you see through the darkness.”

            Thanking her, Emily took the feather, wondering if it was some kind of talisman, and slipped it under her sash. Secretly, she wished it were a flashlight or matches. They embraced, then Annamund lightly touched her ear. 

            “I’m glad they’re gone and now we can be friends again.”

             Emily was too, although being friends made the leaving taking more sad. She hugged Alpha Centauri too around his strong white neck. Yet another creature she hadn’t believed existed. Smelling woodsmoke in his mane and feeling warm horseflesh against her face, his flanks still heaving from exertion, who could doubt that he was real? When he put his head down, she ran a finger the length of his glistening horn and whispered thanks into his ear, to both him and to Oderic, for sending him.

            Arthur knelt and kissed Annamund’s hand. When he stood, Annamund leaned forward momentarily and touched her cheek to his. Emily looked away self consciously, but was too drained from her experience to have any energy left for jealousy; only, her heart felt heavy as any hope of romance with Arthur went down like a sinking ship.      

            Then, with the injured Athena tucked in a pouch against her chest, Annamund left on Alpha Centauri, flying above the crackling of flames, crashing tree branches, screaming rabbits, barking wolves and foxes, and everywhere, the choking, metallic smoke. Beyond it all was the glare and distant roar and tremble of lava shooting up from the abyss. 

            They huddled in the tunnel.  Annamund had told them it led downwards into a cave. Emily had thought the worst was behind them, but faced with darkness, she found it an insidious enemy, just as terrifying in its own way. The walls of the tunnel were rocky and, in places, damp with moisture. She and Arthur walked through the murky light but quickly came to the point beyond which no outside light reached. She hesitated, feeling like she was choosing enforced blindness, like someone was blindfolding her, and she struggled to push down rising panic.

            “Stay close,” Arthur said. 

            He needn’t worry about that. Holding the cypress branch in one hand, she put the other on his shoulder as he felt his way along the walls. She slipped once in a puddle, being more careful of her footing after that. The tunnel narrowed at one point and they were close and cramped. She could hear his breathing. The smell of dirt and mildew filled her nostrils.

            Before leaving, Annamund had told them, Get to the cave. You can breathe there. The tunnel may fill with smoke, but not the cave. It isn’t too far.  Emily sincerely hoped she was right, but it seemed like forever that they had been feeling their way along.

            Without sight, her other senses were hyper vigilant. She listened with every pore and was alive to the slightest touch, like an exposed nerve. So sensitized was she that when a cold breath swept along the back of her neck, she inhaled sharply, grabbing Arthur’s arm.

            “What was that?” she hissed.

            “What?”

            “On my neck.”  Her voice quavered.  “I felt something . . . cold?”

            A moment later, she felt it again, only this time on her face.

            “Arthur?”

            “I felt it.”

            “It feels like . . . breathing. In and out. Do caves breathe?”

            He didn’t answer, but squeezed her hand.

            To her amazement, up ahead appeared slightly less dark, her eyes barely discerning the shades of blackness. Could there be light coming from somewhere? Through a chink in the rocks, perhaps? Rounding a curve, she felt the narrow tunnel open into the spaciousness of the cavern and she took a deep breath, suddenly aware that she had been holding it. A weak light emanated from their left, and it was slightly less dark there than everywhere else. Picking their way carefully, trying not to trip on stalagmites growing up from the ground, they gravitated towards the grayness, eventually finding, to their wonderment, a burning rushlight. 

            “Someone’s here ahead of us,” Arthur whispered.

            A shiver traveled up her spine.

            “I’ll look around,” he said, “but . . . I need the light.”

            “I’ll go with you.”

            “No. Wait here. No sense in two of us tripping. I’ll be right back. Don’t move, so I’ll know where you are.”

            Staying there alone in the darkness was not what she wanted to do, but she was bone weary. Resting the cypress branch on the ground, she watched the light, and Arthur, gradually move away, until they disappeared altogether. Her chest tightened and she could hear her breathing coming faster. Trying to calm herself, she listened to a nearby dripping sound, probably coming from a stalactite on the ceiling. She decided to count the drips to see how long Arthur was gone. It was something to occupy her mind. She counted out loud, for the company of her own voice.

            “One thousand one,” she said softly, her voice almost swallowed up by the emptiness around her. “One thousand two. One thousand three.”

              She wondered what this cave looked like. 

            “One thousand four. One thousand five. One thousand six.”

              She wished she could see it. 

            “One thousand seven. One thousand eight. One thousand nine.”

              Caves were intriguing places, frightening but awesome. One thousand ten.  One thousand eleven . . . .  She hoped Arthur didn’t get hurt and was fretting over what was taking him so long, since she had reached one thousand five hundred and seven when something rustled behind her.

             Immediately, she stopped counting, stopped breathing.

            Had she really heard that?  In darkness, sounds were the texture of her existence, but how did she know which were important sounds and which weren’t?  What in the cave would make that sound? She stood rigid, her heart thumping hard in her chest. Straining to see was of absolutely no use.

            She heard it again. A swish. Very close. In the instant she was about to call out to Arthur, someone clamped a hand over her mouth, pulled her head back and pressed a cold, sharp object against her throat. She froze, then a familiar hateful voice insinuated itself into her ear. 

            “Better pray now, heathen, before I make an end of you.”

            Her brain reeled. She had survived a dragon and the abyss only to die here in the dark at the hands of Simon Poyntz?

            “Do you have it?” When she didn’t move, he continued. “I’m only asking once.” The knife dug deeper into her neck. She felt a sharp pain and a warm trickle.

            She grunted.

            “I’m taking my hand away, but if you scream, I’ll slit your throat faster than a Christmas pig.”

            She had no doubt that he meant it and, when he released her, bent down trembling to pick up the staff. Only she couldn’t find it. Terror seized her as she groped desperately in the blackness, feeling rough, wet stalagmites, nameless rocks and dirt. Where was it?

            “Hurry up,” he spat, giving her a kick. In her crouched position, he knocked her off balance and onto the ground. “The Seneschal said to get the wood, then kill you. For once my duties and desires coincide perfectly.”

            It had to be here. She had put it down right beside her.

            “Sir!” A husky voice nearby that she didn’t recognize startled her.             

            “I told you to wait,” Simon hissed.

            “But you said to keep watch. The light, sir. It’s returning.”

            A lackey, thought Emily, who began to inch away, hoping to escape while Simon was distracted. Instead he grabbed her roughly by the arm, twisting it behind her back.

            “Give it to me!” he said urgently.

            She cried out in pain and Arthur heard.

            “Emilia?  Are you all right?”

            This time she felt the knife in her ribs. Neither of them spoke.

            “Emilia?” 

            Arthur’s voice was drawing closer.

            “Tell him you’re all right. That you found a friend.”

            “I . . . I’m all right,” she croaked. “I found . . . someone,” unable to bring herself to say friend.

            Arthur made a small noise of surprise when he realized who it was and embraced the Bailiff, then greeted the other as “Woodsman.”

            The green man, Emily thought with dismay, recalling how despised the forester was among the laborers. But he wasn’t in the forest now. He had no authority here. Still, as she wiped oozing blood from her neck, it troubled her that Arthur seemed genuinely pleased to see them, especially Simon Poyntz.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

            They instructed the Woodsman to build a small fire with some branches and twigs he had carried in on his back. Of necessity, the blaze would be small. While the forester did that, Arthur and Simon sat down to visit as if they were family, which, in a way, she supposed they were.

            “What brings you here, Simon? You’re probably the last person I expected to encounter.”

            “Who did you expect, sir?” Simon answered, skirting the question. “In a place like this, maybe the bogey man?”

            They both laughed, and by the rushlight she could see Simon pass Arthur a wineskin. Arthur tipped his head back, taking a deep draught, then passed it back and Simon did the same.

            The forester, studiously ignoring her, fanned a few small flames which flickered weakly in the breath of the cave. 

            “How fares the castle?”   

            She heard Arthur’s tense effort to keep his voice casual, like the subtle twisting of a rope that is stretched too far.

            “Gone from bad to worse I’m afraid, sir. That’s why I’m surprised to find you with her,” and he lifted his chin towards Emily.

            “What has Emilia got to do with my home?”

            “All that’s gone wrong began with her, Arthur.” 

            Simon dared to call Arthur by his first name. Was he using their sense of camaraderie to convince Arthur of her blame?

            “Before she arrived, the laborers knew their place. Now they’re trying to leave the demesne, find land of their own, elsewhere. The wheat we planted in the water meadow all came up weak and sickly. Your brother lies on his deathbed and the poor Baroness is distracted almost out of her mind. Now, the forest animals have gone mad and the Earth itself trembles and flames like the pit of hell.” 

            Simon took another long pull from the wineskin and continued. “The Seneschal believes all this ill fortune began with her,” he said, eyeing Emily. “And that devious old weaver who brought her here. Though she’s no longer a problem.”

            Emily started from where she sat on the damp ground. “What have you done to her?” she cried.

            “How dare you talk to me like that!” And Simon jumped to his feet as well.

            Arthur rose, putting a restraining hand on Simon’s arm. “What about the weaver?”

            “Not a hand was laid on her,” he said defensively, then followed up with a harsh laugh. “In fact, we forgot she was there.”

            All was silent for a moment, the only sounds were water dripping from stalactites, small crackles as twigs caught fire, and the hissing of struggling flames. In the flickering darkness, Simon’s eyes were in shadow, but Emily could see the corners of his mouth curved into a sneer. Her chest felt like a huge rock rested there, and her voice trembled as she repeated Simon’s last words.

            “Forgot she was there?”

            “I think no one’s gone to the third floor in some time. The last I heard, Morwen said cook had nothing left to spare, sooooo . . . .”  He shrugged.