(USFB): Fourteen: Ascending a Fallen Monolith

As he yanked and came up, unable to make another step, Razien wondered if he hadn’t been caught in an ill-placed snare. The Cubs had been working on a means of defense should the line break when the invaders pushed through. It was laughable to think that anyone would place a trap of any kind where someone in the camp might easily trip it. He had helped put some of the more basic devices together and counted himself fortunate that he wasn’t among those made to dig pits on the outskirts of Roya. But Razien couldn’t figure why there would be a snare set so close to the cabins and one not rigged well enough to pull his weight into the air.

Working his fingers nimbly around the loop that held his ankle, Razien sought for the end or beginning of the knot. Had he brought a knife, he might have cut it and stepped free, but he hadn’t thought to keep one with him. However, the lack of a blade was not the foremost of his concerns as he felt about the trap and found no end or beginning. Before he tried to dig his digits in and loosen the snare, he felt the pull he had expected. Yet, this was not the jerking of ground from beneath him but his muzzle crashing to the moss and dragged further into the copse.

The moonlight fell against a dense cloud that had pushed over the sky. Glints of green filtered through enough to illuminate the figure that stood, tail against the tree, as Razien finally came to a stop. They were indistinct until moving. To the wolf, it may have been a tree swaying in the breeze until the more apparent features, the limbs, the ears, and those dead eyes, became more fleshed out. The figure did not lean but stood stalk still before the tree as though avoiding the faint rays of moonlight trickling in. A voice hissed out of the shade, a metallic rasp that grew into words.

“You. I have plans for, a proposition for, if you are inclined.”

“I don’t make deals with the Goredrinker or his spawn.”

“Hardly is this an oath in blood, young man. No, this is simpler, nothing beyond yourself,” he shifted, but nothing about his figure was made any more explicit to Razien, “Those monsters from the west are pushing into your lands. They’ve destroyed the lands of my nearkin, your new allies, but not my own. Instead, they sought my aid, but I do not need such paltry fare. No, I could crush them in one paw and still attend to my own desires with the other. However, what I do desire, what is kept from my reach, you might help me with.”

Razien felt his leg relax, the circulation return as the tendril of night released his ankle, and he stood. The man was a few fingers taller than Imfay, which put him well over Razien’s height without antlers, but it wasn’t that which halted Razien’s breath. Now, at his level, with the moon coming free of a branching network of clouds, he could see more of the man. Beyond the dull, rotted milk eyes, the man’s features were afflicted with a spiderweb of old scars that broke the plains of his fur into a valley about mountains of graying pink. His lips told lies his voice did not carry in that grim but self-satisfied expression that seemed a perfect mask for him.

He held out both paws pressed together at the wrist as though offering a gift to the sky, holding them at his eye level. An arc of shade rippled up and over as a canopy to the night light. Razien could see, like water on hot stones, it was deteriorating the more the shine of stars and moon touched it. With a calm that denied any fear of what would happen once his parasol broke, he came again, “The deer, Orathone, I require him. I don’t request you kill him. I need the man alive. There are truths yet unknown to him and functions he must serve less he dooms the whole of these lands to devastation. If you can deliver him to me, not far, but into the darkest shadows you might find, even in your burial grounds, I will lend my aid against the invading army.”

“What good is just your might, even with our own?”

“Our guests from across the sea have many enemies not bound to these lands. Turn him over to me, and you shall see that no harm come from our foe or their rivals,” there was more bounding from his throat as the veil of darkness was shredded by the green night haze. The shade was no more and Razien felt a heavy influence on his heart relinquish its attempt to reign him in. There wasn’t another thought in the wolf’s mind as he felt again in control of his limbs; he needed to move faster.

As he made his way back to the caravan, LaRoux was extracting himself from Gresh’s wagon, balancing a wooden case as he did so. Before he could touch ground, Razien snatched the box from the old lynx’s back. Thinking he had dropped it, LaRoux whirled, a look of pure panic plain on his face until he saw the wolf. Sinking against the back of the wagon, he caught his breath as though he were the one who had just run all that way, “Raz, boy, you trying to kill me?”

“That depends if you can’t rally a few of your men. I need a paw, and I don’t have anyone I can trust. Gresh figured you might.”

LaRoux sought a breath that wouldn’t come, not easily and not hardly as much as he wanted, “Do yourself a favor, son, don’t ever let daughter or niece to you become a priestess. You’ll have your paws full from sun up until sun up the next day for the rest of your life. I’ll scare up a couple of fellas, shouldn’t be hard, but what you need them for?”

“Center of camp, I need them to guard the man we have found in a casket there. There are two foxes who will be there when they get there. Make sure they don’t leave. I need them here until dawn.”

“I’ll pass it on, but you bring that box with to Greshie. I’ll make my way out there still.”

Razien wanted to tell the aging old cat that he wasn’t bound for the tower, not right off, but couldn’t see the harm in withholding that much. If he managed to find a few Northerners to sit with the captured spy, he still wouldn’t make it to the tower by the time Razien had collected the other two; his bones were too old for much haste. However, Razien was still full of the vigor brought on in youth by panic and duty. Lugging the case with him, he returned to the central fire where his four companions waited. With little explanation, he rounded up the deer, despite their weary eyes, and headed the way back to the spire.

As they reached the assembled masses, they found them jittering about, not panicked and looking for escape but patient with anxiety. There came shouts, echoing and rebounding down the metallic passage that led to what was at one time the steepest point of the spire. With Litheiuss’ help, the three made their way to the division where the loosely assembled masses of various groups met the almost homogenous collection of Westerners. Upon crashing like a wave on this beach, Litheiuss found himself incapable of calling his countrymen to stand aside so that he may be permitted access. Razien did not bother with the how of it; instead, he sought Greshalin.

The lynx was no further forward or back from where she had stood, yet her vexation deepened in the face of the oncoming calls from the structure. Razien presented the case, but this did little to ease the burden of Gresh’s worry. Regardless, she took the case in paw and indicated the horde before them, “How are we going to get through? None of this will be of any use out here.”

“I think our friends from the west have a plan,” the wolf remarked before nodding towards the deer. Orathone called out, something indistinct from afar but plainly a warning no matter the space between. As Razien watched the buck lift his paws to the sky, then from him, a surge of root and vine snake across the earth and through the crowd.

It was clear from the altercation before the garden of death that the lurking shadow that had accosted them had some designs on the other people of his land. Though it had struck out at Imfay, it was apparent Orathone had cause to fear as well. The story he had told of a hunting shade that had followed him from the Fold to the Spire felt all the more substantial for that. Yet, even if the man were pursued by this unknowable stranger, was it not possible the man’s query just? The deer and elk had acted in manners completely unacceptable upon arrival, their Yerra most of all. Was it possible they had made enemies before the Legion? Perhaps Orathone was wanted for murder or something of that grave nature? And if he were not, would his sacrifice as an innocent still be worth the weight of aid against the oncoming marauders? Razien dispensed with the thought and took Greshalin by the wrist, following quick behind the two bucks as they pressed into the tower through force.

The push through the tower was no less troublesome, even with Orathone forcing a path for the party. Inside, the prone structure was so clustered it was impossible to make a path for even Greshalin. What Orathone could do was force enough of a gap that they could sidle along the many elk and deer who watched them with irritation. Though they had little right to be there, they acted as though the four had intervened in a private affair.

Within, the Spire was lit by lanterns, giving the two deer an intriguing look into a monument to a time long past. There were compartments that had once been chambers, their function uncertain from the outset, but their vacancy overwhelmingly apparent from the empty shade hanging within. However, some of those lower, pressed against the earth or hovering over ferns and brush outside, were where the collected onlookers shuffled into as they passed. Others hung from the spiraling step that rounded the interior all the way to the top. There was no inroad even on the ground level segments as it had not only been unnecessary until then but because no tool could cut the glittering onyx material.

Little could be said of permanence beyond these ancient structures that had gone somehow untouched by time. Yet, Orathone could see in this tower that, if nothing else, his plants took root. Beyond what had once been the first floor, there was no life, no matter how furtive, taking hold in the ruin. There may have been those limbs and branches that extended in through crude windows and other constructed portals, but the new life that would surge through was brought on by Orathone’s paw. He couldn’t quite explain what invigorated the sprouting bushels of moonflowers brought on through snaking roots beneath the spire, but hardly was it the first time Orathone had experienced such strange occurrences.

As they reached the uppermost layer of the Spire, the cries echoed from afar became a low moaning and groaning that whispered rather than boomed in the open space. Those around the final level, sealed with what had once been a latch now serving as a door, stood idly by. Yet, as Orathone approached, two of the waiting elk seized half of his party. Litheiuss whirled, bringing the younger buck’s attention to skirmish. Razien and Greshalin had been stopped and were being held, the wolf putting up a fight while the lynx hung slack in the elk’s arms, assuring she would not drop the case. Orathone sensed the weakness of his power here and knew he might have little in the way of settling the affair without violence. If only there had been the slightest slit of a window, he could touch earth and summon whatever means might mostly quickly deal with the others; however, Litheiuss asserted himself over his protege.

“Release them; we have business ahead, and they are required in it,” the buck commanded, his voice booming with the confidence of a seasoned veteran.

The closest of the gang served spokesman, “No wolves or lynx or anyone who has yet to swear fealty.”

“Fealty? To whom?”

“Who else? Yerra Imfay. With no surviving kin to the Yerra of Okyna and the north lost to innumerable plights, we must unify under one leader.”

Litheiuss looked to Orathone in confusion and then back to meet a furious glance from Razien, “And what of our hosts? The Yerra is a partner to the Wyse and his people as well as those in the north, but he is not Yerra over them.”

“Shouldn’t he be? Shouldn’t someone with civility and dignity guide the savages to some sort of worthwhile pursuit? The prince was lost because of one of these barbarous creatures. It is clear they need a sense of order from on high.”

“We don’t have time for this. I’m going ahead. Lith, get them to see reason, one way or the other,” Orathone whispered before yanking open the door. As he did, the sounds from the uppermost room resounded once more and died. The assembled masses could only believe that the Wyse’s suffering had ended, one way or the other, but nothing could be more damning than the blood-boltered wolf who stumbled out of the chamber.