Chapter Thirty-Four Felnir #2
Hearing a gasp from deeper in the chamber, he saw Wohtin fall to his knees, his torch slipping from his hand.
Moving to the old man’s side, Felnir found him staring at what initially appeared to be a column of granite jutting from the stone floor.
Yet, as light of his own torch played over it, he recognised it as a statue.
It depicted a young woman clad in unfamiliar garb.
The artistry that had crafted her was evident in the details of her clothing, Felnir making out the stitching and texture of a deer-hide jacket.
Oddly, he saw none of the telltale marks left by even the most skilled masons.
However, it was her face that commanded most of his attention.
Her features were angular with a narrow chin and high cheekbones, but it was the rendering of her expression that impressed most. Her brows were drawn in a frown of judgement, lips pursed, as if she looked upon the group of people before her with sharp disappointment.
“I remember…” Wohtin whispered, reaching up to caress the woman’s stone face with a trembling hand. “I remember your name.”
“You knew this woman?” Felnir asked. He had assumed this statue must have been crafted years before Wohtin and the other exiles from Velgard’s fallen kingdom came to Vorunvahl.
“Of course,” Wohtin replied. “A man should know his own wife. Her name…” He blinked, forehead crinkling as he searched his fractured memory. “Her name was Tanira. Mother to Kurin and Antak.”
“Then whoever carved her must also have known her.” Felnir moved away from the statue, casting his torch over the floor and walls in search of other clues.
He found nothing but featureless stone that felt unnaturally smooth to the touch.
Like the statue, he saw no evidence it had been shaped by use of tools.
It put him in mind of the Vaults of the Altvar, another place of seemingly impossible construction.
Also, he recalled with all too much clarity, a place in which he fervently wished he had never set foot.
His hand went to the sword, finding it thrumming with an uncharacteristic note of warning.
He wondered if it had been stirred by his memory of the vaults, but the acute sense of danger it exuded bespoke a much more present threat.
“Enough,” he said. Seeing Audheld lowering her water flask into the pool, he barked, “Stop that! This is an ill place. We must leave.”
They complied with baffled swiftness, unnerved by his alarm. Only Wohtin remained in the chamber, still enraptured by the sight of his wife. “We have to go,” Felnir said, dragging the old man to his feet.
“Tanira…” Wohtin reached out to caress her stone features. “She… she told me it would be this way. I didn’t listen…”
For a brief second, Felnir was sure he saw the statue’s features move.
The mouth forming a sad, pitying smile. But, as he pulled Wohtin away, the shifting torchlight revealed an unchanged visage set in the same frown of judgement.
Wohtin didn’t resist him, instead lowering his head and hugging himself tight as he was pushed from the knoll’s interior.
“Break camp,” Felnir told Beyorn. “We can’t stay here.”
“Marching on in darkness, my king?” Audheld said.
“See to your tasks!” Felnir snapped, causing her to retreat a step in alarm at the harshness in his voice.
Beyorn, of course, had no questions for the Sea King’s orders, hurrying off to harangue his warriors into motion.
Felnir placed the disconsolate Wohtin in Falk’s care with instructions to get him on his pony.
As the menda roused itself for a night march, their preparations were interrupted by another sound from the knoll.
This was louder than before, a series of deep, rumbling cracks that told of displaced rock rather than mere clay.
With a sudden, shuddering boom the knoll tumbled in on itself, casting out a cloud of dust soon caught by a stiff breeze to sweep over the camp, warriors raising their arms to ward off grit stinging skin and eyes.
When it cleared, the half-moonlight played over a mound of rubble.
“You saved us, my king,” Beyorn said. For once, his awe appeared to be shared by Audheld, although Felnir saw as much fear as wonder in the wide-eyed stare she directed at the Sea King.
“No time for gawping,” Felnir said. “I want this menda on the march now.”
“Was it a trap?”
Wohtin didn’t appear to hear the question, continuing to sit atop his plodding pony while staring into the distance.
Felnir had forced the menda to march another ten miles in darkness before allowing them to rest. He kept to a northerly heading, since their guide failed to offer a direction.
Come the morning, after some hectoring Wohtin consented to point wordlessly to the north-west and they resumed a steady if tired trudge through uncertain ground.
“Enough of this!” Felnir reined Bolt to a halt in front of Wohtin’s pony. “This is not a place where I can indulge your moods, old man. Answer my question: did we walk into a trap?”