Ruins of Camelot (23 page)

A small pile of berries sat nearby her at the very edge of the mashed stalks of her erstwhile bed.  She frowned down at it.  The berries were tiny but bright, tumbled into a neat pile of red and deep purple.  Wild elderberries and raspberries, she thought.  There were even a few acorns scattered into the mix, as if whoever or whatever had left the pile had been slightly unsure of what, exactly, a creature like Gabriella might best breakfast on.

She raised her eyes and looked about her, scanning over the waving stalks of grass.  There was nothing else in sight save for a few distant trees and thin bushes.

Carefully, she reached for the berries, plucked one up.  She popped it into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.  Wherever it had come from, it was extremely welcome.  Her stomach rumbled eagerly at the burst of flavour, and she quickly scooped up the rest of the pile.  The berries were methodically consumed, leaving only the acorns.  She considered trying one, even tested the nut of it between her teeth.  In the end, however, she decided to save them just in case she was less fortunate as the journey continued.  She slipped the acorns into her pack, stood up, and stretched in the morning sunlight.

Whoever her mysterious benefactor had been—and strange as it certainly seemed—it was a much different awakening than she had expected.  Perhaps the magic of this bizarre place so close to the Tempest Barrens was not entirely dark after all.

Unless, of course, the berries were poison.

Considering this a bit worriedly, she set off again.

The grassy valley continued on for some time, becoming golden in the morning light.  She encountered one more stream, trickling thinly through a highway of round, purplish stones, and stopped to refresh herself.  Filling her flask once more, she felt cautiously confident that water would not be an issue as she crossed the steppe.  Food, however, could soon become a scarcity, assuming that her strange night-time benefactor did not show up again.  She puzzled over the mystery as she continued onwards.

Shortly after noon, Gabriella spied a structure on the horizon.  It jutted up irregularly, forming the unmistakable shape of a ruin.  It was too small to be a castle but too large to be a cottage.  As she neared it, squinting in the hard noon sunlight, it began to take on the shape of a long forgotten inn.  The main building stood devoid of any roof.  Its brick and stone walls looked as barren as bones in the grass.  Behind this, a stable was almost entirely lost in vines, bent crookedly in the constant wind.  Finally, approaching the ancient structure's shadow, Gabriella spied the remains of a well, its bucket long gone and its stones collapsed sadly inwards.

She slowed as she neared the main building.  Part of her wanted to enter it, if only to search for any supplies or tools that might be of use.  Another part of her, much deeper and less articulate, insisted she stay far away from it.

It is cursed,
she thought suddenly, as if the idea had come to her from the very air around her, whistling and moaning through the bones of the old inn. 
Something awful happened here.  And I think I know why.  This is the boundary.  This was the last outpost of humanity, right at the edge of the Barrens, catering to the adventurers and magical treasure hunters.  It lasted awhile, maybe even decades, but eventually, the Tempest claimed it, completely and irreversibly.

Gabriella took a step backwards.  Normally, she prided herself on not being a superstitious person.  This, however, was more than idle nervousness, like she had felt whilst skirting the abandoned cottage the day before.  This was like a smell in the air or a dull throb, just outside the range of hearing but sensed nonetheless. 
Stay away,
it warned unmistakably.  She determined that that was good advice.

She began to pace a wide circle around the property, watching it constantly.  The skeleton of a large horse lay in the weeds alongside the inn.  Grass swished and whined through the cage of its ribs.  Its skull seemed to have three eye sockets.  Of course, that had to be an illusion.  She looked again, felt her blood chill at the sight of it, and then looked away.

The inn was perfectly still and silent as she rounded it, and yet it did not feel dead.  She shuddered, unable to shake the feeling that the stillness was a façade, that the inn was watching her with its empty black windows and doorways, measuring her, debating whether or not to allow her to pass.

Finally, thankfully, it was behind her.  She walked on, throwing looks back over her shoulder at it, unwilling to let its watchful emptiness out of her sight until she was well away from it.  As it dwindled into distance, she felt the intensity of its gaze seem to lighten.  She drew a deep breath, turned away from it for the last time, and continued on her way.

She had passed into the Barrens.  The desolate steppe stretched out before her now like a stone ocean, unbroken by trees, shimmering with the waves of its yellow grass.  A pall of loneliness filled the space, expanding all the way to the flat horizon.

Gabriella walked on.

She sang to herself, just to fill the void of silence.  She recalled every bard's tale she could remember and recited the bits that she liked best.  Her voice rang out pristinely, with no echo yet clear as silver bells in the whispering emptiness.  Eventually, however, even the sound of her own voice began to spook her.  She fell quiet and plodded onwards, her boots leaving a wake of bent stalks behind her.

Sometimes, the grasses gave way to expanses of smooth, cracked rock, some of them larger than the courtyard of the castle she had grown up in.  Here, nothing grew, and yet, occasionally, strange cairns of stones would stand erect in the sun, casting hard shadows.  Some of these cairns were nearly as tall as she, balanced so precariously that it seemed that the slightest breath of wind should knock them tumbling.  Other times, the rocky shelves would be carved with ancient symbols, some so large that she could not make them out even whilst standing in the middle of them.  It was as if they had been meant to be viewed from high up, by the very birds of the air.  None of the symbols made any sense to her, even the ones that were small enough to be seen in their entirety, and all of them left her feeling strange and feverish, shivering even in the warmth of the autumn sunlight.

Eventually, the sun began to descend behind her, casting her shadow out before her.  She followed it, watching it stretch longer and longer.  The yellow grass became coppery in the descending light.  A few trees dotted the landscape now, looking gnarled and dead.  Odd, gigantic boulders arose from the grass, as if cast from enormous trebuchets eons ago, forgotten like playing pieces on a monstrous game board.

Gabriella stopped near one of these and leant against it, her back to the sun where it blazed on the western horizon,
its red light melting into the dark line of the earth
.

She withdrew her flask from her pack and drunk from it sparingly, careful not to let even a drop dribble down her chin.  She considered stopping to sleep.  It had been a long, wearying day, and as much as she dreaded the lost time, she knew that she would only waste her supplies by traveling tired, when she was less efficient.

She lowered her pack and knelt down next to it.  Before she could unroll her blanket, however, a subtle sensation drifted over her.  She frowned slightly and then lowered her hand, touching the rocky ground before her.

There was a dull rumble.  It was very faint, and she couldn't tell if she was feeling it or hearing it.  Leaving her pack, she stood up again and scanned the steppe all around her.  Rounding the boulder, she peered toward the northern horizon.  At first glance, she saw nothing.  Then, faintly, she spied a cloud rising, drifting off into the wind.  She watched it, squinting in the dying light, and felt her heart begin to quicken.

The rumble became more pronounced, and dark specks began to take shape beneath the cloud.  They were too low to be horses and riders, yet too few to be a stampede of some native steppe animal.  The size of them made it difficult to judge distance.  Before she knew what was happening, the shapes were nearly upon her.  She watched, grimly transfixed, as the nearest of the creatures came fully into view.  It was a large, brutish beast with a blunt, shaggy head, tossing and huffing, its wide-spaced eyes glinting yellowly in the sunset.  Twisted horns grew from the sides of its head, curving down and out.  Its feet were hooves, churning the ground like pistons, sending up gouts of torn earth and grass in its wake.  Gabriella recognized the creature from the magical histories.  They were called chortha, the beastly, feral offspring of the ancient minotaur.  Something was riding on the chortha’s back, clinging grimly and hunkered low, as if prodding the beast onwards with maddening whispers in its ears.

Gabriella realised the chortha were nearly upon her.  She began to back away towards the nearby boulder, and then turned and bolted, fearing the beasts might overrun her, trampling her in their haste.

She lunged behind the boulder just as the first of the chortha thundered past, shaking the ground and pulling a cloud of gritty dust.  Gabriella pressed her back up against the rock and hugged her knees, boggling as the creature pounded onwards, bearing its strange burden.  The rider appeared to be human but was dressed only in rags, so that streams and tatters of cloth trailed behind it.  Pale skin was stretched over prominent ribs, and the hunched spine was picked out in a row of ugly bumps.  A shock of wild, black hair tossed between the rider's knobby shoulders.

More of the chortha appeared now, buffeting Gabriella with the noise and rumble of their passage.  Each of the beasts bore a rider, and Gabriella saw that they were armed.  Swords were strapped to belts on the riders' wasted hips or worn slung across their backs, but there were no shields or helmets.

An icicle of suspicion suddenly pressed into Gabriella's chest, chilling her.  What if these horrid men were in the employ of Merodach?  What if this was his advance force, rushing toward Herrengard to waylay the royal caravan?  Without thinking, she jumped up and drew her own sword with a ring of metal.

She spun, peered around the boulder, and saw three more of the chortha thundering towards her, their mouths gnashing and their riders glaring forwards, lying low on the backs of their mounts.  Gabriella steeled her nerve, spun her sword so that the blade protruded down rather than up, and then scrambled up onto the boulder, climbing into full sight of the oncoming riders.

"Stop in the name of the Princess of Camelot!" she shouted, raising both of her hands, her sword still jutting from the bottom of her right fist.

The beasts neither slowed nor showed any deviation in their course.  The blank faces of the riders did not so much as flinch.  The nearer riders passed the boulder upon which Gabriella stood, first on the right, and then the left.  The third chortha galloped straight towards her, as if it meant to ram head first into the sloped face of the boulder.  Gabriella watched, eyes widening, resisting the urge to jump out of the way.  She crouched and spun her sword upright again, clutching the hilt with both hands.

At the last moment, the rider twitched the mane of its beast, and the great creature lunged upwards, scissoring its forelegs into the air and, incredibly, launching onto the slope of the boulder.  Its hot breath chugged into Gabriella's face, its hooves clawed and scrabbled at the rock, carrying it up and over.

Gabriella leapt sideways, throwing herself clear and swinging her sword downwards in a steely blur.  It connected with the rider, hacking into it, and then both the beast and Gabriella fell away from each other.

She struck the ground and rolled, dropping her sword.  A split second later, the chortha landed, shaking the ground, momentum forcing it into a shuddering stumble.  It tripped over itself, scrambled, dug in its hooves, and then launched forwards again, pushing onwards in the wake of its fellows.

The rider, however, had fallen off.  The horrid figure rolled awkwardly on the ground, its scabbard flapping like a fin, and then it began to struggle upright.

Gabriella's shoulder throbbed where she had landed on it, but she leapt to her feet, scooped up her sword, and gave chase.  Ahead of her, the figure began to lope after its beast, huffing raggedly.

"Stop!" Gabriella cried out, panting.  "I command you!  What is your business?  Where are you going? 
Tell me!
  I don't want to have to hurt you!"

But, as she could clearly see, she already had.  The figure's gait was clumsy despite its speed, because it was missing its left arm.  It had been severed raggedly just above the elbow.  Black blood dribbled from the wound, staining the remains of the figure's tunic.