Crossing the Naiad



  Crossing the Naiad

  ~ KAUNIS CLAN SAGA ~

  In which Sarvet of the Hammarleedings

  makes a cameo appearance,

  pursuing an adventure on her wanderyar

  by J.M. Ney-Grimm

  Wild Unicorn Books

  Copyright © 2013 J.M. Ney-Grimm

  Cover art:

  “Fairy” by Branislav Ostojic / Dreamstime

  For Mary Anna

  And with many thanks

  to Stuart Jaffe

  for the title

  Crossing the Naiad

  She stood looking across the bridge, feeling the cool breeze and . . . something wrong.

  The bridge was old – the leached stones worn by weather and time, a structure of ancient Silmaren.

  But that wasn't it.

  Something – sinister? – rose from its broken paving. A miasma of despair and defeat that had nothing to do with its gap-toothed balustrade, the holes in its surface giving wide views of the forested ravine and fast river below, or the crumbling statue of a toga-draped maiden from the past ages of the world.

  Kimmer hesitated.

  The new bridge, upstream and crossing low to the water rather than high from one steep brink to the other, was flooded and unsafe.

  Oga and Chedli and Deas – the goats – had balked. Likely they knew, and . . . only a fool would risk a span immersed in a swift current.

  But she had to get home somehow.

  She'd been to the far pastures where the grass billowed thick and lush, a day's journey, and spent two nights.

  Mama said the goats were dowly because they needed copper salts. A spell of cropping the cocksfoot in the foothills beyond the river would put them right.

  And it seemed she was correct.

  Oga pranced perkily behind her. Kimmer could hear her hoofs clicking on the apron of the bridge, while her mother – brown Chedli – whickered softly. Only the matriarch of the trip – gray Deas – stood still, gazing sternly ahead.

  Did she feel it too: the dread emanation from the bridge?

  They'd left the uplands of the foothills at dawn, following the track that wound west through the valleys, skirting ruins of ancient places: towers, spring basins, and even a burial cenotaph.

  The streams were full. Had it rained in the mountains?

  Descending into the ravine of the Gweltspaen, she'd been worried.

  The trees hid the river from view on the steep, hairpin approach, but surely the water flowed high. And the bridge was low. Would it be possible to cross?

  It wasn't.

  She'd retraced her steps, leading the goats, climbing back out of the ravine and searching for the abandoned track to this alternate crossing.

  The ground was rocky here on the eastern rim and the track overgrown only by mosses and lichens and a few stubborn tufts of grass. Finding her way had been more a matter of discerning the true route amidst many false possibilities than uncovering league stones buried by rank scrub.

  As she turned off the main track for this old one, she noticed movement on the cliff of a near hill.

  Someone traversed the path where it looped across the steep bluff, cut into the limestone. A girl?

  Kimmer squinted.

  None of the other girls in her hamlet – either friends or enemies – were visiting the foothills. Their families could afford the yarrow pastilles supplying the copper salts missing from the herbage around Beyholt.

  Besides . . . this girl didn't have goats . . . and was dressed strangely.

  Kimmer shaded her eyes with her hand, and compared her own garments with those of the distant stranger. Was she Hammarleeding?

  Kimmer had never seen one, but she'd heard stories from some who had.

  Elias, nasty bully that he was, claimed they wore the shapes of beasts when they traveled. But this girl wore red, a tunic perhaps, and leggings and a fleece cloak with the hood drawn up. Was her hair dark? She was too far away to be sure.

  I think she is Hammarleeding.

  Certainly her garb was nothing like Kimmer's striped skirt of grass green and cream, her black woolen stockings, her sage bodice and white blouse, and her woven cape of dark pine hue.

  Half-tempted to wait for the traveler to descend the cliff – wouldn't it be interesting to meet one of the fabled Hammar-folk? – Kimmer shook her head, scraped a strand of blond hair back from her face, and stepped onto the old track.

  The detour would cost her time. If she lingered for every curiosity, she'd be hiking long past dark.

  She quickened her stride and clucked to the goats, encouraging them along the unfamiliar route.

  And now she'd reached the river crossing and paused.

  I've got to get home, she told herself, attempting to override the reluctance rooting her to the spot.

  The Gweltspaen in spate was nothing she could ford. This was her only option.

  I've got to cross.

  She stepped onto the bridge.

  Leaped back.

  What was that? Sharp, foreboding, aggressive.

  With her half-boots firmly planted back on the mixture of gravel, rock, and moss that formed the bridge apron, the feeling faded, but a lingering sense of dread and loss fed her qualms.

  I can't do it.

  She had to, but she couldn't.

  A sharp yapping broke her indecision.

  Aani! Ugh! It wanted only that.

  The small white terrier broke from the fringe of trees behind her, racing toward Kimmer's ankles, ready to nip.

  The feisty little dog, nuisance enough, was the least of it. Where Aani pounced, Elias couldn't be far behind.

  Clucking to the goats, Kimmer took to her heels.

  And the bridge seized her.

  * * *

  When Elias noticed the storm clouds dumping rain far to the east on the mountains, he'd worried and done some quick private calculations. Yep. The storm surge would be hitting the low bridge right about when Kimmer did.

  He dithered.

  She didn't like him. He knew that.

  Heck, she had reason. He blushed remembering all the names he'd called her when she started instruction under their hamlet's keyholder.

  Why couldn't he have just said what bothered him?

  Keyholder Pavana was such a fusty old thing: never bathing, never washing her faded old skirt, and speaking in that strange northern accent through toothless gums.

  She was a gifted magicker, yes.

  She'd pulled his own motter back from the brink of death when that nasty grippe hit last winter. Kimmer would learn under her, no question.

  But . . . what else would she learn?

  Would Kimmer get fusty and musty and stooped? Fresh young Kimmer with her clear eyes and slow-blooming smile?

  He hated that idea.

  So he'd chanted that stupid rhyme invented by Beyholt's bullies and called her cheese licker and wheyface.

  Then she'd caught him beating Torluk (the supposed model of all a boy should be) to a pulp behind the smithy. How could she know that Torluk has said worse things behind her back? He'd never tell her. Those words were too foul to repeat.

  So she hated him. He admitted that now. And hated him with reason.

  But he was worried. Also with reason.

  So he'd set out the next morning to check the low bridge, Aani at his heels, and been unsurprised to find it flooded.

  But now he had to hurry.

  Why hadn't he set out at first light?

  Going upstream to the forbidden crossing of flat rocks – forbidden because it lay above the falls – and then back down river too was going to take some time. There was no path. He'd be bushwhacking all the way.

  And he didn't want to miss Kimmer.

/>   Who knew what she'd do when she found the bridge impassible?

  If only young Naaja hadn't gotten sick in the night, vomiting again and again and scaring Motter half silly. He'd run for Pavana, snuffy old Pavana, and sat with Naaja, holding her hand. And overslept himself in the morning.

  So now he hurried.

  And found Kimmer's tracks along with a few goat droppings leading to the old bridge.

  Oh, goddess, no!

  He began to run.

  Didn't she know? Hadn't she heard the stories? Did she not believe them? Or did she think her nascent keyholding skills would protect her?

  Aani dashed ahead of him at the last, barking with frantic urgency, but even Aani was just too late.

  * * *

  If cold stone could flow like water, this stone was running like the racing Gweltspaen far below.

  If time-worn paving could sear like glacial ice, this paving burned.

  If ancient bridgeworks could come alive, this bridge was waking.

  Darkness, unseen by the naked eye, but real and palpable in the mind's eye – the keyholding eye – rose up from the broken balustrades and arched over to enclose Kimmer in a tunnel of shadow and hunger.

  A chill current – inexorable like glacial ice, yet fluid as the summer rain – pulled her ankles.

  And a hatred, mean as the Reindeer People's Deathwind Woman, shoved her shoulders.

  A voice, grating, yet soundless, spoke to her. Die. Fall and die, and feed my lady.

  No. Oh, no. No.

  Kimmer was crying and running – dodging the gaping holes in the span, yes – but dashing forward, her goats brawling and skittering ahead of her, when she wanted to turn back.

  No. Oh, no. No!

  Her attempt to resist failed utterly.

  She approached the halfway point.

  Could she surrender? Give in to the force buffeting her like a storm wind and let it carry her fast and furious out of danger? Forward and off the bridge?

  “Go!” she called. “Chedli, go!”

  The goats did go, flashing past the midpoint in panic, wild and stumbling, but headed for safety.

  Kimmer did not.

  Faster and faster her feet that were not hers carried her.

  Leaping a fallen baluster.

  Skirting a smithy-sized gap to the abyss.

  Right up to the brink . . . and over.

  She was falling.

  * * *

  Elias hit the bridge before Kimmer ran ten paces, but he couldn't catch her.

  He was caught himself.

  Cold and black and bitter, the magic of the stones engulfed him, sped his pumping legs ever faster, but not fast enough.

  Kimmer reached the brink first, and then he followed, tossed into the air like a pebble kicked by a giant.

  Falling, he remembered every tale he'd ever heard about the fabulous works of the ancient Silmarish . . . and the perversions wrought by the trolls who came after them.

  The marble satyrs from a grand fountain sculpted for a queen fled their playful water battle to fight in earnest at the bidding of the troll lord Carbraes: stone fists like warhammers, stone horns like lances.

  The ghosts of a forgotten triumphal arch stripped Ghriana warriors marching under the crumbling porphyry of their souls, laying bare their bodies in the shadow, faces horror-struck.

  A haunted remnant of road, isolated on its fragment of embankment, grew hungry and swallowed travelers whole.

  He smacked the Gweltspaen feet first, plunging deep and gripped by the water's cold strength.

  Down and down.

  Chill and black and numbing.

  He felt frozen, like the statuary satyrs of the queen before their dreadful freedom.

  Green-black immobility congealed around him, then abruptly blinked blacker.

  Green black.

  Blacker black.

  Where was he? This was not water that surrounded him, but stone.

  Faien. The stone groaned. Faien.

  No longer drowning. No longer himself. He could feel the wrongness in this body: spine hunched and aching, knees and elbows knobby and pained, nose elongated and blistered.

  He was a troll.

  But how? And where?

  * * *

  On the approach to the bridge, Hammarleeding Sarvet skidded in her haste, hair twists flying, fleece cloak lost along the trail, red tunic whipped by the speed of her passage.

  “Don't!” she screamed. “Don't!”

  It was far too late for that. The girl – the one she'd seen from the bluff – splashed down violently, arms akimbo, head smacked by the water's surface, then sucked beneath the white-frothed current. The boy, midair, screamed – “Kimmer! Kimmer!” – before the river claimed him.

  Sarvet slid to a halt.

  She'd learned to swim this spring, preparing for her wanderyar, but could she swim well enough for this?

  Then she felt the stones beneath her feet stir: awakened, grasping, and hungry.

  “Oh, Sias, no!”

  This wasn't duoja – too sorcerous and dark.

  Could it be incantatio? The forbidden magic of the trolls?

  Sias, no.

  The pair in the river needed more than swimming to survive. Was she the one to provide it?

  Her thoughts flashed back to her first sighting of the girl, a lowlander. The first lowlander Sarvet would meet.

  How exciting!

  This was what she'd longed for, prepared for, hoped for.

  She'd lived all her life in an isolated enclave among Hammarleedings, wishing she could have a wanderyar like the boys did. Girls didn't get them, but now they did.

  Because of her.

  I made it happen.

  Made it happen because she wanted to travel the wide world seeing wonders: new places – cities even – new ways and new faces. And here she was, the first of many Hammarleeding sisters who would venture out of their mother-lodges.

  She'd been hiking all morning after breaking camp on the lower mountain slopes, following a track through the foothills, noting the tallness of the pines, unstunted by winds at this lower elevation, and the abundance of the streams. Listening to the fluting of birds. Amazed by the differences arriving so quickly.

  And pondering her readiness.

  She'd learned so much in the ramble class: not only swimming and survival skills, but safe methods for approaching strangers and even special duoja – a duoja of light – for travelers. Other cultures had duoja, but they named it differently. The Giralliyans said antiphony. The people of Auberon called it patterning. The Silmarish – this boy and girl were likely Silmarish – called it keyholding.

  Whatever its name, it was power; a power of the mind and spirit fueled by the body's roots. And she, Sarvet, wielded it as a mere novitiate. Would it be enough?

  Shun it, I don't care!

  A girl and a boy were drowning, and she couldn't let them go unaided.

  Still catching her balance from her sudden stop, barely halted, she sprinted onto the bridge and felt its evil seize her: black and gelid, yet speeding her footsteps somehow faster, aimed for the brink.

  * * *

  The water was cold, cold and deep.

  Kimmer hung there, suspended and dizzy, vision black.

  Had she hit her head? She couldn't remember.

  Her lungs began to ache.

  I need to breathe.

  I need to.

  Now.

  But her limbs seemed detached from her will.

  Go up, she told herself.

  Swim.

  But nothing happened.

  She felt the water, chill and implacable, stinging her nostrils and caressing her lips.

  Take a breath.

  There was no air here in the green-black of the river's depths.

  Take a breath.

  Instead, she reached for the still point within her.

  Pavana trained me well.

  She reached, felt it, her own anc
horing, her serenity.

  Silver sparked between her keys, tracing arcs from crown to brow to throat, then to heart and out her fingers. Silver turned to aqua where the energy met the water and then bubbled upward.

  The ache in her lungs eased.

  I am breathing. My keys breathe for me.

  But still she could not move.

  The river moved.

  She could feel the turbulence of the water, sweeping her unresisting downstream, unable to surface, unable to seek the west bank or the east.

  She reached through her keys for more.

  The silver arcs thickened and brightened.

  She moved her fingers – yes! – and nearly inhaled from the pain of it, sharp and sudden.

  Bearing a sense of malice.

  You are mine. My food. Mine.

  It was a whisper without sound.

  Mine. All mine.

  With the words came pain again, an invasion, a bruising probe toward her keys.

  Give me.

  No.

  Yes. You will give.

  Kimmer reached within once more.

  Chartreuse light glimmered along her inner links, fountained out from her feet and palms, enveloped her wrists and ankles.

  Her pain melted under its advance, from elbows and knees, from belly and heart. That was better.

  What next?

  * * *

  Elias tried to ease his joints, to move. The stone held him.

  Then the black of his prison released. He flailed in water once more, greenish and cold, but fluid and translucent, not obdurate and opaque.

  He kicked out, scrabbling for the surface, for air.

  And found it: a brief snatch of breath – air – then water again, then air.

  The river tumbled him, the current wild and eddied in its upper reaches.

  He fought the liquid tumult, thrashing.

  A boulder smacked his ribs and spun him around.

  He went under again, then bobbed up, gasping.

  Was the river a live beast, determined to consume him?

  He fought to see, but couldn't, his eyes submerged more often than not and blinded by froth when not. Was the river's white turbulence endless?

  A moment later, he wished it were. Stone gripped him again.

  Faien, whispered the silence.

  And images bloomed in his thoughts.

  It was a battle, he was sure, but a battle like none he'd ever imagined.

  No swords, no shields. No armor-denting blows.

  The lady was fair, tall and queenly, and gowned in slender green. How many knights of old had vowed their victories to her honor?