"Parfrey, Kyle - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parfrey Kyle)

Dawn

Dawn

by Kyle Parfrey
With a gentle rustling of dead leaves a narrow way was parted between the thick undergrowth that lay as a carpet on the bleak dark expanse. There was a glint of light, small but noticeable as a thin stream made its way around the gnarled bushes and down the slope towards the forest. It trickled silently, apart from the slight sound of the parting plants and disturbed animals it came into contact with as it made its way towards the pool. This pool was deep in the dark forest, a forest dark save for the warm ethereal glow of the slowly congealing fluid."What, what, what are you disturbing me for?" Flen was roused from his fitful sleep by the servant crouched at the far side of his bedding chamber. He was having a difficult night, images of the ever-approaching dawn making inroads into his dreams. The cowering servant became even more afraid as his lord raised himself off his circular bed and threw his casual robe around his naked frame, he ran out of the room to hide in case the master should deign to take retribution if his message turned out to be inconsequential. Hoo-las was waiting outside and the lord and his leader of council walked together towards the breakfast room. Hoo-las told him that the servant was there on a message from him. "I think we should talk sir, one of the recent patrols of the kingdom by the Blue Guards has revealed something of interest. It is not urgent as of now but its strangeness and proximity to the Yalu border merit your disturbance in my mind, sire."
"Yes, yes, yes whatever. Are the cooks doing bob-nobs today?" They walked on, the councilman’s head filled with visions of Yalu treachery and bizarre scientific discovery and the lord trying to decide whether he would prefer bob-nobs or grain slappers for breakfast.
 
At a specially convened council meeting that same morning the lord was filled in on the new "discovery" by a representative of the Blue Guard patrol. The patrol commander sat in the centre of the circular table on a raised dais. As he could not face everyone at once, the platform was rotated by set of gears connected to an adjoining room. There, convicts turned a large wheel to power the contraption. The idea was to set the speaker off guard and make council interrogations more powerful. It wasn’t strictly necessary here but it was standard practice.
" Tell us what you saw quickly commander, so everyone can get their lunch at a reasonable hour, please?" The good lord was feeling out of sorts that day and as usually happens in those circumstances his mind wandered to his bottomless stomach at ever increasing intervals.
The guard swiveled in his seat to face his questioner as the chair was pointing off at about thirty degrees and moving away. "Our group was marching through the forest when a point of light pierced the ever present gloom. We double-stepped over to this apparition and upon reaching it saw that it was a large pool of swirling liquid. It was very reflective in nature and I thought at first that it could have been melted flangum, or glore, which our armor is made of. But it smelled very peculiar indeed, sire, and I would think it is some new metal in liquid form. Sir."
" What the hell do you think I am, some mad alchemist? How could you possibly think that some confounded "new metal" could be of any interest to me? And you woke me from sleep and curtailed the length of my breakfast to a very unsatisfactory size!" The lord was angry and everyone stiffened noticeably.
Hoo-las decided that the irate lord had not heard all the news and called him back from his special door to his private apartments with a quick "But sire there more news that I trust will make this episode significant!" The good lord Flen , ruler of the Kingdom of Ki and steward of the Great City and Castle of the Pit retreated to his lavishly decorated armchair. He motioned to the guard commander to continue his story.
" Well sir, the funny thing was that the area of trees and bushes surrounding the pool were green and growing. Also the size of the pool was slowly expanding, but noticeably." There was general silence as the councilmen pondered the meaning of this information. The first to look seriously worried was the councilor in charge of the Transition of the Dawn, among other things.
" This could be disastrous!" he bellowed in a voice halfway between low gruffness and deep resonance. "If the forest starts growing before the dawn, then when the kingdom brightens there will be serious problems. We could be overrun by the armies of nature."
Nobody liked this thought. The Dawn was ever present in the minds of the people of Queyale at this time. The Dawn itself is when the strange orbit the world has around the sun aligns with the world’s axis. Usually the most northern part of the world, including much of Queyale, is pointed away from the sun and the entire land is shrouded in the ever-present gloom and mist. When the Dawn happens, usually every nine hundred days, the huge sprawling forest that lies waiting for the rest of the year suddenly starts growing at a tremendous rate. The enormous trees of the great forest spread out towards the habitations of people and every time there are problems with them.
One of the main troubles with the Dawn is that all sorts of rarely seen animals suddenly appear from out of the dense jungle, running riot throughout the land until the world turns away from the sun after sixty days and they scamper off into the bushes.
The council thought about this for a few minutes, until Lord Flen decided to make a decisive move and totter off towards his apartments, probably to get some form of mid-morning refreshment. The council dispersed and the room was locked by the quare little people who lived in the cellar and never saw the light of day, whenever that momentous occasion took place.
 
While the people in the Pit became confused and went to lunch, the swirling pool grew steadily. It was not as if it was swelling outwards very fast, but slowly expanding and including more and more of the gargantuan jungle trees in its light. Of course, when the foliage was touched by the soft rays of light it channeled it through the tree and began to grow. These kings among plants had evolved to grow vast amounts during the narrow summer of the Dawn, so they grew. And grew. The bushes and small trees gradually received light and grew, and the animals lying dormant there wakened and clambered out into the world again.
 
The figure walked slowly along the parapet of the wall of the City. His face was lit only by the dim flickerings of the fat lamps that smoldered along the boundary. If any watchman had happened upon him at the time he would have appeared grim and desolate. But this was not really the case. Hoo-las always looked like that when he was thinking. It wasn’t that he was not worried, but only slightly. Strange things had happened before during the Dawn and they had always managed. But the source of his worries was not the problem itself but his lords’ ambivalence towards it. Lord Flen had become more self-centred recently. Some thought that he had some slight illness or irritation of the system that deflected his attention away from his work.
Flen used to be well liked in the land, though his reputation was partly due to the victories of his generals in a brief war with the Yalu-Mykh alliance. The war was the cause the ensuing downfall of the alliance and a return of relative security to the land of Queyale. He was capable enough then and many of the older members of the communities in the border regions still praised him highly, but the truth was that he had declined greatly in energy since. Much of the day to day governing of the land fell to others but a Lord was needed for grand undertakings. There had been few glorious projects started in his reign and Flen was needed to commence the founding of the sort of expedition that had to be dispatched to investigate the findings of the Guards.
At the present time he was unavailable due to the fact that he was in a meeting with the Guild of FlangumMeisters who were disputing with their demi-lord over excess working hours required to complete a batch of flangum crates necessary for transporting goods across the mountains. After this the good lord would doubtless retire to his chambers for the rest of the night. Hoo-las made a resolution to convince him tomorrow. Then he walked out of the glow of the lamp and into the shadows of the internal corridors.
The midgets who worked in the cellar carried the chest upstairs towards the map room. The chest was made of a very heavy variety of wood and it might have seemed unfair to anyone who saw them haul it up the narrow twisting staircase had they not known about the little people. Very few knew where they originated and only the highest group of magistrates and rulers in the Kingdom of Ki knew their story.
About twenty of them were found about two hundred years ago in the hold of a mysterious ship. The captain and crew had all been savagely hacked to death with the hatchets used for chopping off sail ropes in time of storm. No-one knew where the ship had come from and the little people spoke no Kian. They were secretly appropriated by the Overlord of the time and trained to serve in the cellar and the keep. To this day they have not been taught Kian and they speak a form of the ancient language of the higher classes that had since died out. Those that knew of their existence doubted that they were simple servants and some thought that had a more sinister purpose.
They were bringing up the chest of maps for the Great Forest. Few had entered the Forest recently and the maps within were old and faded. When they silently opened the door to the room and brought in the chest some common servants took it off them and placed it in the centre of the room where a group was waiting for it. The midgets disappeared silently back to from where they had come forth.
The group clustered round the maps. The commander of the Blue Guards on the day they had sighted the pool was pointing out their location at the time to the assembled Lords and commanders.
An expedition was being organized. Hoo-las had succeeded in persuading Lord Flen to put top priority on the situation. The only available troops were those of the 7th Blue Battalion on leave in the City. They were scheduled to depart in five days to the Mykh border where trouble with some unaligned tribes was being encountered.
Messengers on swift horses were dispatched to Baron Waqueyles’ stronghold and to the botanists and experts on living things that Hoo-las was rounding up.
The guards captain traced a line showing where he intended to march the expedition. In order to reach the site in time the line went over marshes and lakes, through dangerous territory and across some unexplored terrain. It would be an interesting undertaking indeed. A date was set, one rotation of Remus’ Moon, and then they would be off.
As the others filed out through the massive paneled doors and down the twisting stairs, the Lord pulled his council leader over into the nearest corner. He waited until the rest of the party was without doubt out of earshot and then turned back to Hoo-las. "I think you should go with them, Hoo-las. This is important and you are my most able advisor. You should represent me as I cannot leave the City now, in the preparation for the Dawn. Will you go, Hoo-las?"
As he listened to this the experienced administrator felt very proud. He was right, he thought, he was needed. Make sure the soldiers didn’t eat the botanists. He mumbled his gratitude and walked off downed the stairs.
The first of the ‘erratics’, as they came to be called, was sighted on the following day. It was a strange flying animal, like a bird but with a furry tail and a short, broad snout. It perched like a bird on top of the Hall of Wonders in the centre of the City. It toddled around there for most of the morning until a brief downpour sent it away. Many onlookers stood to gawk at it and by that afternoon the City was soaked in water and tales of strange beasts with one head but three noses, and the like. Some damage was done to the chief stables when a glorified peasant, making jugs for sale in the market, tried to catch an unusual animal scrambling along the gutter of the building. He managed to crack off whole yards of gutter and wall plaster before falling and smashing an ornamental water trough at the top of the steps.
This type of behavior is generally not tolerated and the Lord had to give a speech saying that any further rambunctious actions on the part of the citizens would mean being set in irons in the town square while passers-by threw the remains of meals and horse manure at them. This did not stem the numbers of incidents of general disorder in the City and several unfortunates were left in irons being pelted by onlookers during some of coldest and wettest days in months. There is always a strange sort of mythical allusion with the Dawn and though authorities try to turn it into a period of happiness and hard work (for much of our crop growing had to be done in that time) many found it a time for pranks and debasement.
The old man walked down the alley. He had a hunched back and he looked over his shoulder nervously. He lifted his eyes and watched some guards patrol the perimeter of the castle grounds. He hadn’t been here before, in a small, dilapidated street leading to a side entrance to the castle. His nervousness was not just due to his unfamiliarity with the location, he was also afraid that others might see him. With the spread of mischievous behavior during the lead up to the Dawn there were rumours that the Overlord had sent spies into the city to report on wrongdoers. Slinking off into the castle might give people ideas, and he really didn’t need that kind of thing.
He met Hoo-las at the gate, and was led inside to one of the smaller buildings near the castle proper. Hoo-las carried the old mans’ bag for him. When they had sat down at a table in the little building Hoo-las opened the bag. It was quite a large bird-hide bag, and not nearly full. He took out a small roll of parchment and an even smaller jar of greenish fluid. The old man watched Hoo-las inspect them before quietly suggesting, " They are as you have asked."
"They appear to be. Thank you for bringing them." He had opened the parchment onto the table. It was a dirty map, and had many roughly drawn symbols that were inscribed in red. "What does this symbol mean, I have not encountered it before?"
The other man bent over the map, squinting at it. "That is where the Great Expedition of the 4th Nlakken Dynasty is believed to have perished. It was drawn in by one who had studied all about the expedition, but even then it is only a guess. The log book that was found with the map was very inconsistent."
"Is this the liquid that I asked for as well? I do not have time to seek it out for myself." Hoo-las looked at the old man "You would not try to deceive me."
"No, that is it. It was passed on to me by my grandfather, and is the last remaining portion in my families possession." He looked sad, and his eyes drifted to the floor.
"You may go. With this. Your generosity will not be forgotten." Hoo-las handed him an opaque canister.
"Yalu blue ale. Thank you, I has been a long time."
"Enjoy it." With that Hoo-las got up and left the building, his cape streaming out behind him as he strode towards the castle. All was now set in motion, it would not be long ‘til they could depart.
Baron Waqueyle arrived in the early hours of the morning. The gates to the City were locked, he’d be sure to give the gatekeepers a flogging when the decided to wake up and open the damn doors. The Baron was here because he was the most experienced adventurer in the Kingdom of Ki. Adventurism was falling out of fashion. As a young man he trekked had through the stony marshes to obtain documents from the chief stronghold of the Mykh, and he knew much about expeditions and the wilderness.
After flogging the cowering gatekeepers he proceeded to the Castle. He met Hoo-las, and they began to perfect their plans for the expedition before Lord Flen got up, had his breakfast and came down, an ordeal he did not fully finish every time he attempted it. The Barons’ beard was short and bushy, and he had shaved his moustache so that it looked like a ball of fur had mysteriously affixed itself to his chin without his knowledge. He was rubbing it now (there wasn’t enough length to do the more common stroking motion) and his other hand followed routes on the map. They had to arrive quickly, so they were taking chances. Waqueyle didn’t like that at all, one didn’t live through 435 season changes in his old line of work by taking stupid risks.
It was decided before Flen came down. They would have to take to Great Kian River, in its upper and convoluted stages, for thirty-five miles. That way the marshes would be missed. It was a compromise.
Hooves dug into the moist earth, the animals’ breath turning to vapour in front of their nostrils. The column was moving, beams of dirty gray light from lamps illuminating thin stretches of the vast dark landscape. The pace would be slow enough; the botanists had insisted on taking lots of odd equipment. The column was headed by thirty of the best men of the blue guard. The original captain, the one who had spotted the pools, was violently sick with Spluttering Fever and had to be left in the City. There were five botanists and three what could best be described as wise men. Hoo-las and the Baron were in the centre of the group. Five hours out from the City they stopped at the edge of the bushland. They slept for a while, then awakened to the calls of birds unnaturally brought out of hibernation. They went on.
The whole journey for the next four days was very dull. They marched the animals through the bushland, across the grassy hills and down to the banks of the Great Kian River.
The soldiers started to make rafts from the surrounding woods. Hoo-las and the botanists sat on a hill waiting, the Baron and the wise men were down at the bank giving orders and shouting. The sky was dark and Hoo-las was tired. He was not used to this. His legs hurt, could they not get animals with thinner backs? His legs had been stretched in a very uncomfortable position for hours every day, and he had no one to complain to. The botanists tried to look intelligent to each other by attempting catch another out on question on the regions’ plants.
"Look at that flower, Jiles. Its full Old Kian name is?"
"I wonder what is the standard length of that Ropers Vine. Do you know, Glump?"
"If we had to make a mixture of Bugs Tree sap Rydll here wouldn’t know which side to drain the sap off, would you?"
They pretended it was all great fun, but it was plain to see the intense rivalry between them. He got up and walked down to the bank. The boats seemed to be almost finished. There were three, and they looked awfully dinky in comparison to the mighty river. The animals were loaded onto one, they had to be tied down with rope to stop them from jumping out as the boat was pushed out. All the people, excepting the soldier who went with the animals, crammed onto the other two boats and they pushed off from the bank.
The boats glided down the river, and the expedition could see the marshes on their left, the pungent odour clawing at the inside of every mans nose. The soldiers took turns steering the boats, and the tiny change in the brightness of the sky that signaled the passing hours came and went, and the expedition clung to the boats for a day and a half. With his tough hide hat pulled down hard over his skull Hoo-las peered across the waters at the far bank. The landscape had changed dramatically, and the vegetation becoming ever greener, a thick dark green that blocked all light so that soon all that could be seen of the forests at the bank was a dim outline and that green.
The soldiers laughed when the botanists tried to get off the boat. After nearly two days on the river they quickly fell flat on their noses, provoking yelps of disbelief from the botanists. The wise men were last to come off the boats, they had watched the others reel around dizzily, and in their wisdom took it very cautiously. The first gorge had been reached, the river was impassable and the boats were abandoned. The soldiers brandished huge curled sword and began to hack a path through the overgrowth, with the wise men looking at maps and compasses and generally getting in the way of the chopping.
 
They walked up to the top of the hill and flopped onto the cold, damp earth. The soldiers took it in turns to keep watch for the beasts of the forest, the rest sleeping through the totally black night. Hoo-las couldn’t sleep. They had come very far, but they didn’t even know what they were going to do when they found the pools. It seemed a good course of action at the time, but the whole adventure began to look a little pointless in retrospect. He fell asleep.
A very low groaning noise woke the group. It was close, but it was not the noise that startled them as they flung themselves out of their blankets. It was the strange light. Light. The wise men looked down the slope of the hill, and beneath them, stretching back in the direction they had come was a small lake. The liquid was quietly radiating the soft light, and a large gray animal was looking up at them from the bottom of the hill and groaning. Some of the soldiers flung a few rocks at it and it moved off.
Hoo-las, Baron Waqueyle and the guards captain brought out the ancient map the old man had given to them, as well as the other maps of the supposed site of the pools. The liquid seemed to have spread over a large distance; they were still many hours march away from the site of the first sighting. The wise men were collecting the liquid in glass jars, and the botanists were examining plants touched by it. The guards captain moved off, returning after about ten minutes.
Hoo-las opened his cloak, and from a long inside pocket he withdrew the little transparent vessel that held the green liquid. It had been difficult to obtain, the old man had this tiny amount, and the scarcity only increased its already great value. He went down to the edge of the pool, and smashing the vessel against a sharp black rock threw the contents into the pool. The green liquid could easily be seen floating on the surface of the fluid, spreading over the surface of the lake. It suddenly changed its colour to a vibrant purple, then sank and mingled with the rest of the lake.
Hoo-las was mildly relieved. This unusual test told him that the fluid would not explode when the harsh rays of the Sun fell full force upon it. So many chemicals, created in the murky environment of the perpetually dim Land of Quelyale, erupted when the stark natural radiation of the worlds’ only sun scoured their surfaces.
"The liquid appears to have followed a path from the first pool. It congregates in hollows and forms little lakes when it gets the chance, otherwise it flows in the form of a stream." The guards captain sat beside the Baron and Hoo-las who were waiting for the wise men and botanists, now climbing back up the hill, to report.
The oldest of the wise men came to the front of the little party. He took out a full jar from his cloak and handed it to the Baron. "As you can see, its mildly warm but not hot, and we have tested it on wood and skin, it doesn’t burn."
A botanist held up an uprooted plant. " Doesn’t harm the plants. This one has grown about two centimeters since last night. Amazing. The light from the liquid is more powerful than normal light, somehow. We have never seen anything like this before."
"Look at this." It was the guards captain, bent over the dusty map appropriated from the old man in the City. "The lay of the land was all uphill from the river to here. The stuff is going to flow into the river." There was only a short silence before the wise men got going. They started talking of huge overgrown killer fishes, of blocked river passages and of being cut off from the route back to the City. Only one saw the real dangers, though as yet unconfirmed. The river supplied most of the water for the entire land of Queyale. If the liquid was poisonous……….. Also, by moving by the river the liquid would cover a huge area very quickly, and no-one knew what would happen if the trees and animals of the entire forest awakened prematurely.
Their hastily packed bags slung over their shoulders, the company rushed down to the bottom of the hill. All the animals were gone; a few bones were left. Hoo-las tried to remember if that big gray thing had an evil look in its eye. The Baron immediately set off back towards the river, and everyone else had to follow. The botanists struggled to keep up him, refusing to dump their equipment. The way they had forced on their way in had become overgrown, all in one night. Everyone had to help make way, every the three wise men made gestures of hacking with their little daggers.
By the time they reached the bank of the river they were all exhausted. There was a sharp wind in the air, and some greenish clouds drifted across the dark sky. The green clouds were a unique phenomenon of the region. Gas from the marches evaporated in such quantities that whole clouds of it gathered above. The party split into groups to find the current point of the edge of the glowing stream. By the time Hoo-las found it his hands were cut up severely by the thorny overgrowth, and he was so thirsty he almost drank the thick pale yellowish-orange fluid. He called for the others.
When you stood at the farthest point that the liquid stream had reached, you could see the Great Kian River, not very far away. The Baron took charge, ordering the building of a barrier to the liquid. They picked a spot about 50 paces from the edge of the stream, and began to erect a wooden dam. They worked hard.
Hoo-las hardly noticed the passing of time. The slight difference in the darkness of the sky was washed out by the soft radiance of the stream. He worked frantically, chopping trees and helping to lodge them together in the dam. It was going to be high, already it reached up higher than a person, and there would be banks around the side to stop the stream following a different route to the river.
The stream was already lapping at the bottom of the dam by the time they had all finished, lying exhausted against the wall of wood. They rested for a short while. The leaders met together to decide what to do. It was possible that the dam wouldn’t hold forever, and Hoo-las wanted to return to the Castle and the City in the pit and warn its people to take care with their water, as well as fortifying the city against any giant beasts that might be awakened. The Baron wanted to remain with the dam. Hoo-las got his way, and they left that hour.
This time they had to paddle against the flow of the great river. All unnecessary equipment was thrown away, and with the soldiers straining at the oars the boats made steady progress up the river. It would be days before they reached the point where they ditched the boats. Hoo-las realized that the soldiers would need rest. They continued.
 
Three days later the haggard and tired expedition reached land. There was little food on the boats, and the constant buffeting against the river caused sleeplessness among all members. They had no animals, so they marched in a vague line towards the City. To look at them one would not realize that they were Baron Wasquele, Chief of Council Hoo-las and some of the most distinguished wise men in the Kingdom. Their clothes were a dirty shade of brown and their faces were plastered with mud. They walked through the night, unwilling to sleep when their destination was so near.
They were walking along the dirt trail that leads to the City from the west, when they saw it, and its Castle. The dim light of the sky faintly illuminated it. As they walked towards the pit the sun finally reached above the horizon, and the first rays of the Dawn fell on the faces of the group. They watched as the City was lit up, shining with the rare light that only comes from the sun. As they walked they heard the cannons firing, the Ceremony of Light had started.
They reached the perimeter of the Pit, in which was built the City and the Castle. Baron Wasquele looked down onto the City. Mirrors had been placed on top of the Public Library, and the sky was washed with coloured reflected light. The City looked clean, the normal omnipresent drabness disappearing with the Dawn. Hoo-las stood beside him, and it was several moments before they moved off.
The expedition came through the gates of the City. The great buildings were covered in the flowers, and the people strolled around happily. There was some damage done by animals. The erratics had wrecked the First Temple. Altogether it wasn’t too bad, it could have been a lot worse. The company broke up by the ruins of the temple, they all had people they need or wanted to see. Hoo-las went to the Castle, up the winding staircase and into the council chamber.
Lord Flen was there. "Hoo-las it’s so good to see you again. We’ve had some problems here, nothing major. The festivities are going well." Just then a huge firecracker lit burst above the Castle. "Well, Hoo-las, tell me all about it. My lunch comes soon and I don’t like to keep the chef waiting."
The liquid lapped against the dam, it had built up, its level now about half as tall as a man, or the same size as one of the dwarves of the Castle. The sun beat down upon it, and it started to turn to steam. Within minutes the whole stream had evaporated, forming a beautiful golden cloud in the bright sky. It was blown across the land, towards the City. Everyone there marveled at the golden cloud, but no rain fell and it moved away. The Dawn came and went, and the animals went back to sleep, not to wake for a long time.
 

Dawn

Dawn

by Kyle Parfrey
With a gentle rustling of dead leaves a narrow way was parted between the thick undergrowth that lay as a carpet on the bleak dark expanse. There was a glint of light, small but noticeable as a thin stream made its way around the gnarled bushes and down the slope towards the forest. It trickled silently, apart from the slight sound of the parting plants and disturbed animals it came into contact with as it made its way towards the pool. This pool was deep in the dark forest, a forest dark save for the warm ethereal glow of the slowly congealing fluid."What, what, what are you disturbing me for?" Flen was roused from his fitful sleep by the servant crouched at the far side of his bedding chamber. He was having a difficult night, images of the ever-approaching dawn making inroads into his dreams. The cowering servant became even more afraid as his lord raised himself off his circular bed and threw his casual robe around his naked frame, he ran out of the room to hide in case the master should deign to take retribution if his message turned out to be inconsequential. Hoo-las was waiting outside and the lord and his leader of council walked together towards the breakfast room. Hoo-las told him that the servant was there on a message from him. "I think we should talk sir, one of the recent patrols of the kingdom by the Blue Guards has revealed something of interest. It is not urgent as of now but its strangeness and proximity to the Yalu border merit your disturbance in my mind, sire."
"Yes, yes, yes whatever. Are the cooks doing bob-nobs today?" They walked on, the councilman’s head filled with visions of Yalu treachery and bizarre scientific discovery and the lord trying to decide whether he would prefer bob-nobs or grain slappers for breakfast.
 
At a specially convened council meeting that same morning the lord was filled in on the new "discovery" by a representative of the Blue Guard patrol. The patrol commander sat in the centre of the circular table on a raised dais. As he could not face everyone at once, the platform was rotated by set of gears connected to an adjoining room. There, convicts turned a large wheel to power the contraption. The idea was to set the speaker off guard and make council interrogations more powerful. It wasn’t strictly necessary here but it was standard practice.
" Tell us what you saw quickly commander, so everyone can get their lunch at a reasonable hour, please?" The good lord was feeling out of sorts that day and as usually happens in those circumstances his mind wandered to his bottomless stomach at ever increasing intervals.
The guard swiveled in his seat to face his questioner as the chair was pointing off at about thirty degrees and moving away. "Our group was marching through the forest when a point of light pierced the ever present gloom. We double-stepped over to this apparition and upon reaching it saw that it was a large pool of swirling liquid. It was very reflective in nature and I thought at first that it could have been melted flangum, or glore, which our armor is made of. But it smelled very peculiar indeed, sire, and I would think it is some new metal in liquid form. Sir."
" What the hell do you think I am, some mad alchemist? How could you possibly think that some confounded "new metal" could be of any interest to me? And you woke me from sleep and curtailed the length of my breakfast to a very unsatisfactory size!" The lord was angry and everyone stiffened noticeably.
Hoo-las decided that the irate lord had not heard all the news and called him back from his special door to his private apartments with a quick "But sire there more news that I trust will make this episode significant!" The good lord Flen , ruler of the Kingdom of Ki and steward of the Great City and Castle of the Pit retreated to his lavishly decorated armchair. He motioned to the guard commander to continue his story.
" Well sir, the funny thing was that the area of trees and bushes surrounding the pool were green and growing. Also the size of the pool was slowly expanding, but noticeably." There was general silence as the councilmen pondered the meaning of this information. The first to look seriously worried was the councilor in charge of the Transition of the Dawn, among other things.
" This could be disastrous!" he bellowed in a voice halfway between low gruffness and deep resonance. "If the forest starts growing before the dawn, then when the kingdom brightens there will be serious problems. We could be overrun by the armies of nature."
Nobody liked this thought. The Dawn was ever present in the minds of the people of Queyale at this time. The Dawn itself is when the strange orbit the world has around the sun aligns with the world’s axis. Usually the most northern part of the world, including much of Queyale, is pointed away from the sun and the entire land is shrouded in the ever-present gloom and mist. When the Dawn happens, usually every nine hundred days, the huge sprawling forest that lies waiting for the rest of the year suddenly starts growing at a tremendous rate. The enormous trees of the great forest spread out towards the habitations of people and every time there are problems with them.
One of the main troubles with the Dawn is that all sorts of rarely seen animals suddenly appear from out of the dense jungle, running riot throughout the land until the world turns away from the sun after sixty days and they scamper off into the bushes.
The council thought about this for a few minutes, until Lord Flen decided to make a decisive move and totter off towards his apartments, probably to get some form of mid-morning refreshment. The council dispersed and the room was locked by the quare little people who lived in the cellar and never saw the light of day, whenever that momentous occasion took place.
 
While the people in the Pit became confused and went to lunch, the swirling pool grew steadily. It was not as if it was swelling outwards very fast, but slowly expanding and including more and more of the gargantuan jungle trees in its light. Of course, when the foliage was touched by the soft rays of light it channeled it through the tree and began to grow. These kings among plants had evolved to grow vast amounts during the narrow summer of the Dawn, so they grew. And grew. The bushes and small trees gradually received light and grew, and the animals lying dormant there wakened and clambered out into the world again.
 
The figure walked slowly along the parapet of the wall of the City. His face was lit only by the dim flickerings of the fat lamps that smoldered along the boundary. If any watchman had happened upon him at the time he would have appeared grim and desolate. But this was not really the case. Hoo-las always looked like that when he was thinking. It wasn’t that he was not worried, but only slightly. Strange things had happened before during the Dawn and they had always managed. But the source of his worries was not the problem itself but his lords’ ambivalence towards it. Lord Flen had become more self-centred recently. Some thought that he had some slight illness or irritation of the system that deflected his attention away from his work.
Flen used to be well liked in the land, though his reputation was partly due to the victories of his generals in a brief war with the Yalu-Mykh alliance. The war was the cause the ensuing downfall of the alliance and a return of relative security to the land of Queyale. He was capable enough then and many of the older members of the communities in the border regions still praised him highly, but the truth was that he had declined greatly in energy since. Much of the day to day governing of the land fell to others but a Lord was needed for grand undertakings. There had been few glorious projects started in his reign and Flen was needed to commence the founding of the sort of expedition that had to be dispatched to investigate the findings of the Guards.
At the present time he was unavailable due to the fact that he was in a meeting with the Guild of FlangumMeisters who were disputing with their demi-lord over excess working hours required to complete a batch of flangum crates necessary for transporting goods across the mountains. After this the good lord would doubtless retire to his chambers for the rest of the night. Hoo-las made a resolution to convince him tomorrow. Then he walked out of the glow of the lamp and into the shadows of the internal corridors.
The midgets who worked in the cellar carried the chest upstairs towards the map room. The chest was made of a very heavy variety of wood and it might have seemed unfair to anyone who saw them haul it up the narrow twisting staircase had they not known about the little people. Very few knew where they originated and only the highest group of magistrates and rulers in the Kingdom of Ki knew their story.
About twenty of them were found about two hundred years ago in the hold of a mysterious ship. The captain and crew had all been savagely hacked to death with the hatchets used for chopping off sail ropes in time of storm. No-one knew where the ship had come from and the little people spoke no Kian. They were secretly appropriated by the Overlord of the time and trained to serve in the cellar and the keep. To this day they have not been taught Kian and they speak a form of the ancient language of the higher classes that had since died out. Those that knew of their existence doubted that they were simple servants and some thought that had a more sinister purpose.
They were bringing up the chest of maps for the Great Forest. Few had entered the Forest recently and the maps within were old and faded. When they silently opened the door to the room and brought in the chest some common servants took it off them and placed it in the centre of the room where a group was waiting for it. The midgets disappeared silently back to from where they had come forth.
The group clustered round the maps. The commander of the Blue Guards on the day they had sighted the pool was pointing out their location at the time to the assembled Lords and commanders.
An expedition was being organized. Hoo-las had succeeded in persuading Lord Flen to put top priority on the situation. The only available troops were those of the 7th Blue Battalion on leave in the City. They were scheduled to depart in five days to the Mykh border where trouble with some unaligned tribes was being encountered.
Messengers on swift horses were dispatched to Baron Waqueyles’ stronghold and to the botanists and experts on living things that Hoo-las was rounding up.
The guards captain traced a line showing where he intended to march the expedition. In order to reach the site in time the line went over marshes and lakes, through dangerous territory and across some unexplored terrain. It would be an interesting undertaking indeed. A date was set, one rotation of Remus’ Moon, and then they would be off.
As the others filed out through the massive paneled doors and down the twisting stairs, the Lord pulled his council leader over into the nearest corner. He waited until the rest of the party was without doubt out of earshot and then turned back to Hoo-las. "I think you should go with them, Hoo-las. This is important and you are my most able advisor. You should represent me as I cannot leave the City now, in the preparation for the Dawn. Will you go, Hoo-las?"
As he listened to this the experienced administrator felt very proud. He was right, he thought, he was needed. Make sure the soldiers didn’t eat the botanists. He mumbled his gratitude and walked off downed the stairs.
The first of the ‘erratics’, as they came to be called, was sighted on the following day. It was a strange flying animal, like a bird but with a furry tail and a short, broad snout. It perched like a bird on top of the Hall of Wonders in the centre of the City. It toddled around there for most of the morning until a brief downpour sent it away. Many onlookers stood to gawk at it and by that afternoon the City was soaked in water and tales of strange beasts with one head but three noses, and the like. Some damage was done to the chief stables when a glorified peasant, making jugs for sale in the market, tried to catch an unusual animal scrambling along the gutter of the building. He managed to crack off whole yards of gutter and wall plaster before falling and smashing an ornamental water trough at the top of the steps.
This type of behavior is generally not tolerated and the Lord had to give a speech saying that any further rambunctious actions on the part of the citizens would mean being set in irons in the town square while passers-by threw the remains of meals and horse manure at them. This did not stem the numbers of incidents of general disorder in the City and several unfortunates were left in irons being pelted by onlookers during some of coldest and wettest days in months. There is always a strange sort of mythical allusion with the Dawn and though authorities try to turn it into a period of happiness and hard work (for much of our crop growing had to be done in that time) many found it a time for pranks and debasement.
The old man walked down the alley. He had a hunched back and he looked over his shoulder nervously. He lifted his eyes and watched some guards patrol the perimeter of the castle grounds. He hadn’t been here before, in a small, dilapidated street leading to a side entrance to the castle. His nervousness was not just due to his unfamiliarity with the location, he was also afraid that others might see him. With the spread of mischievous behavior during the lead up to the Dawn there were rumours that the Overlord had sent spies into the city to report on wrongdoers. Slinking off into the castle might give people ideas, and he really didn’t need that kind of thing.
He met Hoo-las at the gate, and was led inside to one of the smaller buildings near the castle proper. Hoo-las carried the old mans’ bag for him. When they had sat down at a table in the little building Hoo-las opened the bag. It was quite a large bird-hide bag, and not nearly full. He took out a small roll of parchment and an even smaller jar of greenish fluid. The old man watched Hoo-las inspect them before quietly suggesting, " They are as you have asked."
"They appear to be. Thank you for bringing them." He had opened the parchment onto the table. It was a dirty map, and had many roughly drawn symbols that were inscribed in red. "What does this symbol mean, I have not encountered it before?"
The other man bent over the map, squinting at it. "That is where the Great Expedition of the 4th Nlakken Dynasty is believed to have perished. It was drawn in by one who had studied all about the expedition, but even then it is only a guess. The log book that was found with the map was very inconsistent."
"Is this the liquid that I asked for as well? I do not have time to seek it out for myself." Hoo-las looked at the old man "You would not try to deceive me."
"No, that is it. It was passed on to me by my grandfather, and is the last remaining portion in my families possession." He looked sad, and his eyes drifted to the floor.
"You may go. With this. Your generosity will not be forgotten." Hoo-las handed him an opaque canister.
"Yalu blue ale. Thank you, I has been a long time."
"Enjoy it." With that Hoo-las got up and left the building, his cape streaming out behind him as he strode towards the castle. All was now set in motion, it would not be long ‘til they could depart.
Baron Waqueyle arrived in the early hours of the morning. The gates to the City were locked, he’d be sure to give the gatekeepers a flogging when the decided to wake up and open the damn doors. The Baron was here because he was the most experienced adventurer in the Kingdom of Ki. Adventurism was falling out of fashion. As a young man he trekked had through the stony marshes to obtain documents from the chief stronghold of the Mykh, and he knew much about expeditions and the wilderness.
After flogging the cowering gatekeepers he proceeded to the Castle. He met Hoo-las, and they began to perfect their plans for the expedition before Lord Flen got up, had his breakfast and came down, an ordeal he did not fully finish every time he attempted it. The Barons’ beard was short and bushy, and he had shaved his moustache so that it looked like a ball of fur had mysteriously affixed itself to his chin without his knowledge. He was rubbing it now (there wasn’t enough length to do the more common stroking motion) and his other hand followed routes on the map. They had to arrive quickly, so they were taking chances. Waqueyle didn’t like that at all, one didn’t live through 435 season changes in his old line of work by taking stupid risks.
It was decided before Flen came down. They would have to take to Great Kian River, in its upper and convoluted stages, for thirty-five miles. That way the marshes would be missed. It was a compromise.
Hooves dug into the moist earth, the animals’ breath turning to vapour in front of their nostrils. The column was moving, beams of dirty gray light from lamps illuminating thin stretches of the vast dark landscape. The pace would be slow enough; the botanists had insisted on taking lots of odd equipment. The column was headed by thirty of the best men of the blue guard. The original captain, the one who had spotted the pools, was violently sick with Spluttering Fever and had to be left in the City. There were five botanists and three what could best be described as wise men. Hoo-las and the Baron were in the centre of the group. Five hours out from the City they stopped at the edge of the bushland. They slept for a while, then awakened to the calls of birds unnaturally brought out of hibernation. They went on.
The whole journey for the next four days was very dull. They marched the animals through the bushland, across the grassy hills and down to the banks of the Great Kian River.
The soldiers started to make rafts from the surrounding woods. Hoo-las and the botanists sat on a hill waiting, the Baron and the wise men were down at the bank giving orders and shouting. The sky was dark and Hoo-las was tired. He was not used to this. His legs hurt, could they not get animals with thinner backs? His legs had been stretched in a very uncomfortable position for hours every day, and he had no one to complain to. The botanists tried to look intelligent to each other by attempting catch another out on question on the regions’ plants.
"Look at that flower, Jiles. Its full Old Kian name is?"
"I wonder what is the standard length of that Ropers Vine. Do you know, Glump?"
"If we had to make a mixture of Bugs Tree sap Rydll here wouldn’t know which side to drain the sap off, would you?"
They pretended it was all great fun, but it was plain to see the intense rivalry between them. He got up and walked down to the bank. The boats seemed to be almost finished. There were three, and they looked awfully dinky in comparison to the mighty river. The animals were loaded onto one, they had to be tied down with rope to stop them from jumping out as the boat was pushed out. All the people, excepting the soldier who went with the animals, crammed onto the other two boats and they pushed off from the bank.
The boats glided down the river, and the expedition could see the marshes on their left, the pungent odour clawing at the inside of every mans nose. The soldiers took turns steering the boats, and the tiny change in the brightness of the sky that signaled the passing hours came and went, and the expedition clung to the boats for a day and a half. With his tough hide hat pulled down hard over his skull Hoo-las peered across the waters at the far bank. The landscape had changed dramatically, and the vegetation becoming ever greener, a thick dark green that blocked all light so that soon all that could be seen of the forests at the bank was a dim outline and that green.
The soldiers laughed when the botanists tried to get off the boat. After nearly two days on the river they quickly fell flat on their noses, provoking yelps of disbelief from the botanists. The wise men were last to come off the boats, they had watched the others reel around dizzily, and in their wisdom took it very cautiously. The first gorge had been reached, the river was impassable and the boats were abandoned. The soldiers brandished huge curled sword and began to hack a path through the overgrowth, with the wise men looking at maps and compasses and generally getting in the way of the chopping.
 
They walked up to the top of the hill and flopped onto the cold, damp earth. The soldiers took it in turns to keep watch for the beasts of the forest, the rest sleeping through the totally black night. Hoo-las couldn’t sleep. They had come very far, but they didn’t even know what they were going to do when they found the pools. It seemed a good course of action at the time, but the whole adventure began to look a little pointless in retrospect. He fell asleep.
A very low groaning noise woke the group. It was close, but it was not the noise that startled them as they flung themselves out of their blankets. It was the strange light. Light. The wise men looked down the slope of the hill, and beneath them, stretching back in the direction they had come was a small lake. The liquid was quietly radiating the soft light, and a large gray animal was looking up at them from the bottom of the hill and groaning. Some of the soldiers flung a few rocks at it and it moved off.
Hoo-las, Baron Waqueyle and the guards captain brought out the ancient map the old man had given to them, as well as the other maps of the supposed site of the pools. The liquid seemed to have spread over a large distance; they were still many hours march away from the site of the first sighting. The wise men were collecting the liquid in glass jars, and the botanists were examining plants touched by it. The guards captain moved off, returning after about ten minutes.
Hoo-las opened his cloak, and from a long inside pocket he withdrew the little transparent vessel that held the green liquid. It had been difficult to obtain, the old man had this tiny amount, and the scarcity only increased its already great value. He went down to the edge of the pool, and smashing the vessel against a sharp black rock threw the contents into the pool. The green liquid could easily be seen floating on the surface of the fluid, spreading over the surface of the lake. It suddenly changed its colour to a vibrant purple, then sank and mingled with the rest of the lake.
Hoo-las was mildly relieved. This unusual test told him that the fluid would not explode when the harsh rays of the Sun fell full force upon it. So many chemicals, created in the murky environment of the perpetually dim Land of Quelyale, erupted when the stark natural radiation of the worlds’ only sun scoured their surfaces.
"The liquid appears to have followed a path from the first pool. It congregates in hollows and forms little lakes when it gets the chance, otherwise it flows in the form of a stream." The guards captain sat beside the Baron and Hoo-las who were waiting for the wise men and botanists, now climbing back up the hill, to report.
The oldest of the wise men came to the front of the little party. He took out a full jar from his cloak and handed it to the Baron. "As you can see, its mildly warm but not hot, and we have tested it on wood and skin, it doesn’t burn."
A botanist held up an uprooted plant. " Doesn’t harm the plants. This one has grown about two centimeters since last night. Amazing. The light from the liquid is more powerful than normal light, somehow. We have never seen anything like this before."
"Look at this." It was the guards captain, bent over the dusty map appropriated from the old man in the City. "The lay of the land was all uphill from the river to here. The stuff is going to flow into the river." There was only a short silence before the wise men got going. They started talking of huge overgrown killer fishes, of blocked river passages and of being cut off from the route back to the City. Only one saw the real dangers, though as yet unconfirmed. The river supplied most of the water for the entire land of Queyale. If the liquid was poisonous……….. Also, by moving by the river the liquid would cover a huge area very quickly, and no-one knew what would happen if the trees and animals of the entire forest awakened prematurely.
Their hastily packed bags slung over their shoulders, the company rushed down to the bottom of the hill. All the animals were gone; a few bones were left. Hoo-las tried to remember if that big gray thing had an evil look in its eye. The Baron immediately set off back towards the river, and everyone else had to follow. The botanists struggled to keep up him, refusing to dump their equipment. The way they had forced on their way in had become overgrown, all in one night. Everyone had to help make way, every the three wise men made gestures of hacking with their little daggers.
By the time they reached the bank of the river they were all exhausted. There was a sharp wind in the air, and some greenish clouds drifted across the dark sky. The green clouds were a unique phenomenon of the region. Gas from the marches evaporated in such quantities that whole clouds of it gathered above. The party split into groups to find the current point of the edge of the glowing stream. By the time Hoo-las found it his hands were cut up severely by the thorny overgrowth, and he was so thirsty he almost drank the thick pale yellowish-orange fluid. He called for the others.
When you stood at the farthest point that the liquid stream had reached, you could see the Great Kian River, not very far away. The Baron took charge, ordering the building of a barrier to the liquid. They picked a spot about 50 paces from the edge of the stream, and began to erect a wooden dam. They worked hard.
Hoo-las hardly noticed the passing of time. The slight difference in the darkness of the sky was washed out by the soft radiance of the stream. He worked frantically, chopping trees and helping to lodge them together in the dam. It was going to be high, already it reached up higher than a person, and there would be banks around the side to stop the stream following a different route to the river.
The stream was already lapping at the bottom of the dam by the time they had all finished, lying exhausted against the wall of wood. They rested for a short while. The leaders met together to decide what to do. It was possible that the dam wouldn’t hold forever, and Hoo-las wanted to return to the Castle and the City in the pit and warn its people to take care with their water, as well as fortifying the city against any giant beasts that might be awakened. The Baron wanted to remain with the dam. Hoo-las got his way, and they left that hour.
This time they had to paddle against the flow of the great river. All unnecessary equipment was thrown away, and with the soldiers straining at the oars the boats made steady progress up the river. It would be days before they reached the point where they ditched the boats. Hoo-las realized that the soldiers would need rest. They continued.
 
Three days later the haggard and tired expedition reached land. There was little food on the boats, and the constant buffeting against the river caused sleeplessness among all members. They had no animals, so they marched in a vague line towards the City. To look at them one would not realize that they were Baron Wasquele, Chief of Council Hoo-las and some of the most distinguished wise men in the Kingdom. Their clothes were a dirty shade of brown and their faces were plastered with mud. They walked through the night, unwilling to sleep when their destination was so near.
They were walking along the dirt trail that leads to the City from the west, when they saw it, and its Castle. The dim light of the sky faintly illuminated it. As they walked towards the pit the sun finally reached above the horizon, and the first rays of the Dawn fell on the faces of the group. They watched as the City was lit up, shining with the rare light that only comes from the sun. As they walked they heard the cannons firing, the Ceremony of Light had started.
They reached the perimeter of the Pit, in which was built the City and the Castle. Baron Wasquele looked down onto the City. Mirrors had been placed on top of the Public Library, and the sky was washed with coloured reflected light. The City looked clean, the normal omnipresent drabness disappearing with the Dawn. Hoo-las stood beside him, and it was several moments before they moved off.
The expedition came through the gates of the City. The great buildings were covered in the flowers, and the people strolled around happily. There was some damage done by animals. The erratics had wrecked the First Temple. Altogether it wasn’t too bad, it could have been a lot worse. The company broke up by the ruins of the temple, they all had people they need or wanted to see. Hoo-las went to the Castle, up the winding staircase and into the council chamber.
Lord Flen was there. "Hoo-las it’s so good to see you again. We’ve had some problems here, nothing major. The festivities are going well." Just then a huge firecracker lit burst above the Castle. "Well, Hoo-las, tell me all about it. My lunch comes soon and I don’t like to keep the chef waiting."
The liquid lapped against the dam, it had built up, its level now about half as tall as a man, or the same size as one of the dwarves of the Castle. The sun beat down upon it, and it started to turn to steam. Within minutes the whole stream had evaporated, forming a beautiful golden cloud in the bright sky. It was blown across the land, towards the City. Everyone there marveled at the golden cloud, but no rain fell and it moved away. The Dawn came and went, and the animals went back to sleep, not to wake for a long time.