The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (70 page)

Shann spoke softly into what she supposed was the Chandara’s ear. “Can you tell us where your people are?”

Boxx lifted an arm and pointed with one of its three digits to a place on the map. “They Are There.”

Rael craned his neck. “Are you sure?”

“Why, what’s there?” Shann asked.

“Well…nothing. It’s the middle of nowhere.”

“Is there no forest nearby?”

“Not according to the topographical map,” Rael answered. “The forest where the Chandara used to live is well to the north of there.”

Shann turned to Boxx. “There is no forest–no Great Tree in that place. Are you sure your people are there?”

“Chandara Are There,” Boxx repeated. “And They Are Suffering. Annata Has Told Us.”

Shann looked urgently at Rael. “How do we get there?”

He studied the map further. “Well…it’s a three-hop journey.”

“A what?” she returned.

“You remember Ravid saying that the range of an avionic was no more than twenty-five met-ryns or so?” he began.

“Yes,” she said, “but I still don’t know what a met-ryn is.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter for now. The point is that after so far, the avionic has to put down at a recharging station. They are usually recharged overnight. That means three hops–three days to get to the station nearest to the point on the map that your Chandara indicated.”

“Great.” She smiled. “Let’s get going.”

Rael held up a hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can make a trip like that.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because I am needed here. There’s the diametric drive project out on the flats, for one.” He went back to the map, drawing the route with his finger. “Three days to reach the location here. Say, a day wandering about in the wilderness looking for your Chandara friends. Then three days journey back. A minimum of seven days in all. I don’t think Hannath is going to release me for that amount of time. I…could ask him, I suppose.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Rael looked confused. “You don’t want me to ask him?”

“We can’t risk it. If he gets wind of the fact that me and Boxx want to leave, he could reinstate the drach guards and we might never get out of here.”

“But I can’t just leave, Shann. Besides, we would have to travel by avionic, and I don’t have access to one.”

“What about the one we’ve been using?” she suggested.

“That machine belongs to the Scientific Directorate.”

“Then we borrow it for a while.”

“What? Are you crazy? We can’t steal an avionic.”

She glared at him. “I’m going with or without you.”

“Impossible,” he protested. “The first hop is over the Cathgorn Peaks, southeast of here. It’s one of the most perilous and inhospitable places in all of Kelanni-Skell. Glaciers, hidden crevasses, not to mention some highly dangerous creatures that prowl the snow fields up there. You would never make it on foot. It’d be suicide.”

“And if I don’t go, we’re dead anyway. Besides, Boxx says the Chandara need our help. I’d rather die trying to do something than rot here, helpless.”

Rael’s face betrayed a storm of conflicted loyalties. She hated to have to do this to him, but it was the only way. He shook his head. “I can’t let you kill yourself.”

“Does that mean you’re going to help me and Boxx?”

He looked from one to the other. “You realise an avionic can only accommodate two people.”

“Then it’s going to be a tight squeeze,” she said.

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Chapter 14

For the first time in many days, Keris felt truly alive.

At daybreak she had struck out northeast from Kieroth across the snow-covered countryside. Beneath her jet-black Keltar tunic and trousers, she wore an insulating coverall made from a thin fabric, which she had acquired from their hosts. It hugged her wrists and ankles, making her body feel warm and secure. The cold still clawed at her extremities and a biting wind slapped her face in gusts, numbing her cheeks and bringing tears to her eyes. Still, it felt good to be out in the open and on the move.

Keris leaped over the ground, pushing off the available deposits of lodestone, moving rapidly. Although she had refrained from mentioning it to Lyall, while Alondo had been busy talking to the artisan community in Kieroth and losing himself in the new found wonder of their engines and other devices, she had conducted her own little side investigation into the whereabouts of the Chandara on this side of the Barrier.

Most of the young people she spoke to knew nothing of the forest dwellers and cared less. The older generation, however, pricked their ears as if it were a familiar name they had not heard in many turns. One grizzled Kelanni with thinning hair and skin like worn leather, who she found sitting alone in the corner of a dusty workshop, even claimed to have seen them. He also spoke her dialect, what the locals called Old Kelanni, although with a peculiar inflection.

“Candachra–the First Ones. Sure, I seen ’em. It were near a full turn afore the war with them hu-mans. Nastiest lookin’ people y’ever did see. Pale pink skin. Made ya feel sick just to look at ’em. And no tail at all. Made ya wonder how them creatures ever managed to stand upright.” He threw back his head until the tendons in his neck were taut and let forth a laugh, dry and cracked as old leaves. “Anyways, we in the Kieroth Militia had ’em trapped on the beach at Chanoch Bay. We had already trashed their three flying vessels, when–”

“The Candachra,” she reminded him.

“Oh…why sure. Well, they were the First Ones, ya know.”

“First Ones? What does that mean?” she asked.

The old man laughed his raucous laugh once more, then stifled a paroxysm of coughing. “You young-uns, I declare. I don’t know what them fancy educators teach ya these days. The Candachra lived here in this world long before we Kelanni arrived.”

Keris could not see how the old timer could possibly know that, but it didn’t seem pertinent to her inquiry, so she decided to let it slide. “I see. Tell me, when did you last see them?”

The old man’s eyes lost their focus. “I remember like it were yesterday. I were a logger back then. We worked on the edge o’ the great forest in the Atarah Lowlands. Back then, the forest stretched for a hundred met-ryns. At the centre, were a tree that were ten times bigger than the rest, wi’ branches that scraped the sky. There were where them Candachra lived–hundreds of ’em. In the morning they’d just appear outa the mist that covered the forest floor, makin’ them high chirpin’ noises o’ theirs. One time I recall, one o’ them came forward and spoke to Darvath. It carried a staff like an old, twisted branch. Said stuff like, ‘Take, Plant, Preserve The Wood’. Darvath pulled off ’is cap and scratched ’is ’ead till it were raw, but ’e couldn’t make no sense out of it. Still, they never interfered with the logging. Just stood there on there on their hind limbs, watchin’ us with eyes like black flames. Made some ’o the loggers nervous at first, but eventually we just got used to ’em.

“Then one day, they were gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yup. One mornin’ they just didn’t show. We never saw ’em again after that. Some ’o the lads said ‘good riddance’. Others swore it were ’cause some disaster were about to befall us, but nothin’ bad happened. Darvath wouldn’t talk about it. Just yelled at everyone to get back to work. Not long after, the war started, so we packed up and went back to Kieroth to defend our mates an’ young-uns.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to them?” she asked.

“Nope. I did go back to Atarah a few turns after the war, but the forest were dyin’.”

Keris’ eyes widened. “Dying? How?”

“No-one knows,” he replied. “The trees were goin’ bare as far as the eye could see. The massive tree that were their home were dyin’ too.”

“What about the Chand–the Candachra?”

The old man spread his bony arms wide. “Dead maybe. Or maybe they up stakes and went somewhere else.”

Keris was stunned. Could it be that the Chandara had all perished on this side of the Barrier? She shoved the thought aside. Annata would not have told her to seek them out if they no longer existed. They had to be here somewhere. The destruction of their Great Tree was a disaster, but at least it gave her a starting point. If the forest of Atarah was as large as this old-timer claimed, then he couldn’t possibly have searched it all. And if they had migrated, there might be clues as to where they had gone–maybe even a clue to the devastation of the forest itself. “Can you tell me how I would get to the forest from here?”

The oldster blinked. “Now why would you want to travel there?”

A number of convoluted and unlikely excuses flitted through Keris’ thoughts. However, there seemed little point in resorting to elaborate deception. If the old boy paraded through the streets trumpeting their conversation, she doubted whether anyone would take him seriously. So she plumped for something close to the truth. “I am investigating a situation that may be a major threat to our world.”

The old man leaned forward and his eyes narrowed, making his crows feet stand out. “Ya heard the saying, ‘mock an old man in ya youth, an’ they’ll mock ya when ya’ve na tooth’?”

She hadn’t, of course, but she had no interest in debating the homespun philosophy of this culture. “I’m serious.”

He shrugged. “Well, ‘help a traveller on his way, an’ ya’ll be helped another day’. In any case,” he snickered, “I never could resist a pretty face.” Keris resisted the overwhelming temptation to kick him in the teeth and smiled weakly instead. “East by avionic over the Meurig Mountains. Then north to the Atarah Lowlands. Ya’ll run right up against the forest–or what’s left of it, at any rate.”

“What if I didn’t travel by avionic?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t ya go by avionic? Ya scared o’ flyin’ or somethin’?”

“No,” she replied. “I…just never learned to fly one of those things.”

The old man’s face erupted into a toothless grin. “Me either. If ya go farther up the coast a ways, ya’ll come to the Meurig Divide. Cross there an’ continue north. Can’t miss it.”

Keris thanked him and turned to go. “One thing.” She turned back to see that he was frowning. “Just a little farther north o’ the forest lies Kynedyr, the ruined city o’the Ancients, abandoned at the Goratha–the dark time. Don’t ya go anywhere near that place.”

Her ears pricked up at the mention of Annata’s people. “Why? What’s there?”

“Strange things,” he said, “Things na man’d care t’see. Some say they seen spectres, images o’ them that went before. Make sure ya stay away.”

Keris thanked him and excused herself. Naturally, she wasn’t about to head out into open country on the word of a crazy old coot, so she had asked around some more. It seemed that the old boy’s directions were sound enough, although she put little store in his superstitious warning. Belief in spectres–that was for senile old men, children and the hopelessly ignorant.

Keris gradually retracted the upper lodestone layer of her flying cloak. As the ground rose up to meet her, she flexed her knees and came to a running stop. She shielded her eyes, gazed up at the early morning suns and took her bearings. The jagged peaks of the Cathgorn range loomed large to her right; to her left, a large circular field held a scattering of avionics, surrounding a squat grey building.

A low humming sound, rising in pitch. Shouts.
The disturbance was coming from the direction of the sleek flying craft. Moments later, one of them rose into the air, wheeled around, and shot away in a southerly direction toward the town.