Chapter Nine: Revelation in the Ravine

 

Finally, the guard led Kyosti away from the silent queen and down the hanging stair to another secret door that led to the docks. There were no more words exchanged between them, and the guard left without looking back.

Kyosti took a boat from the Capital Island south-east to Merta, a bustling seaside town. Already autumn was deepening, the days turning shorter and colder the further south he went. He bought supplies in Merta and headed east toward the Medlyn Ocean. If the ice had advanced as far as the Wolverine Mountains, he would have to find a boat to take him across the Medlyn. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure he could not step on the ice again.

Snow fell sometimes, usually at night when it was coldest, and the characteristics Kyosti knew so well appeared around him: small, furry animals, hoarding the last berries and nuts for a deep, long winter, scampered around him. A freezing wind blew up from the south, bringing with it a smell he knew and desperately missed: the smell of the ice.

He followed the shore of the Medlyn Ocean south and then east, a vast ocean of black, stormy water on his left, and a long line of rounded shield volcanoes on his right. In the shadow of those mountains, lashed by angry ocean spray, he spent many nights sheltered in the old shrines to the Fiery Wolverine and the Fleet-Footed Foxes. Villages, abandoned as the inhabitants fled north against the advancing ice, stood empty and mournful. Kyosti saw no one from the time he found Medlyn shore until he had left the shadow of the volcanoes to cross the great Lamas plain to the Seer’s Camp.

As the Wolverine Mountains petered out into little foothills on his right, Kyosti looked to the south and saw a white line, closer than he had thought, stretching from one horizon to the next. And beyond that white line, a darkness that even the rising sun could not banish. A dark land light never touched.

As he crossed the Lamas plain, the white line grew closer and closer, and so did the darkness. The sun was slowly moving north again for the winter, and the darkness in the south deepened. He watched it with growing trepidation until he reached the Seer’s Forest and it disappeared from view.

It had been a month since he left the city. He was only three days, by his estimate, from the Seer’s Camp. The Sue Mountains loomed ahead of him, with Badger Peak directly ahead. He knew he would find the Seer’s Camp nestled in the shadow of that peak. He had run into a bit of trouble, however, with a series of deep ravines that ran across his path. He had wasted several hours trying to walk around and eventually decided that he would simply have to climb into and then out. They were shallow enough that he should be able to do it easily.

He made it down easily enough and found a small, icy stream, barely flowing, which was easy enough to jump over.

Now, for getting out.

Kyosti had to walk for almost two miles before he found a spot low enough to climb. The soil was loose, but there were several stunted trees to grab. As he reached about halfway up to slope, one of the trees tore out of the ground under his hand, and he fell backward with a cry, rolling back down the slope onto the shores of the stream.

He could hear rattling in his backpack as he sat up, and he groaned. “Please tell me I didn’t smash the food,” he muttered.

It was worse. Way worse. The box the queen had given him was smashed, and he saw immediately why it had been so heavy.

Kyosti reached with trembling, reverent hands to grasp the knife lying in the splintered remains of the box. It was a dull white, a little bit longer than his hand, and the handle fit perfectly in his palm. It would have been too small for a Chith fighter, but his small Innis hands grasped it perfectly.

It was made, as far as he could tell, from a whale bone, with carvings of fish, seals and whales on the handle and the blade. It was an Innis knife.

An Innis knife? To the Seers? Those traitors who had joined the Chith in subduing the Innis? Those traitors who worshiped the Limitless Spyglass? This sacred Innis knife, carved from a whale bone, was to be given to the Seers?

It could not be. He would not do it. The knife had to be returned to the Innis.

Kyosti was halfway up the slope, knife clutched in his hand and pack dangling half-open from his shoulder, when real life crashed down on him.

He would return the knife to the Innis? He was as much a traitor as the Seers were. Worse, even.

“I can’t take it to the Innis,” he muttered, his pack slipping off his shoulder. “I can’t go back. I can never go back.”

He clutched the knife to his chest, struggling to breathe. 

Perhaps he could go right to the edge of the Ice and leave it there, leave it at one of the places Innis often traveled to. But the Ice was so far north this year, he could never guess where they might travel to.

Taking the knife back to one of the Innis he knew in the empire, like Kayla, was out of the question. They were just as forbidden to return as he was.

And taking the knife to the Seers….he simply could not. There was little chance of them finding out what the knife was used for, but just the idea of them having it was painful to him.

It was possible he could find a patrol of Chith soldiers heading down to the Ice and give them the knife to return to the Innis. He didn’t know how that would work, but it might.

However, with the winter growing so cold, no patrol would dare go south until summer. By then, the queen would discover his deception and the knife would be removed from him. He would have to give it to someone non-Innis to give to someone on the patrol, and the chances of it getting lost….

Maybe if he ran now, he could escape and eventually find a merchant who was going south?

Kyosti’s vision swam, and he quickly sank down into a crouch, trying to regulate his breathing. Running was perhaps his best option. Since he could not give the knife to the Seers, the queen would know his deception anyway. In the end, he would have to disappear.

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Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash