Of the Fortress of Thorns

DAVID AWOKE the next morning to find Roland gone. The fire was dead, and Scylla was no longer tethered to her tree. David rose and stood where the horse’s tracks disappeared into the forest. He felt concern at first, then a kind of relief, followed by anger at Roland for abandoning him without even a word of good-bye, and, finally, the first twinge of fear. Suddenly, the prospect of confronting the Crooked Man alone again was not so appealing, and the possibility of the wolves coming across him was less appealing yet. He drank from his canteen. His hand was shaking. It caused him to spill water over his shirt. He wiped at it and caught the jagged end of a fingernail on the coarse material. A thread unraveled, and as he tried to free it, his nail tore still further, causing him to yelp in pain. He threw the canteen at the nearest tree in a fit of rage, then sat down hard on the ground and buried his head in his hands.

“And what purpose did that serve?” said Roland’s voice.

David looked up. Roland was watching him from the edge of the woods, seated high on Scylla’s back.

“I thought you’d left me,” said David.

“Why would you think that?”

David shrugged. Now he was ashamed of his display of petulance and his doubts about his companion. He tried to hide it by going on the attack. “I woke up and you were gone,” he replied. “What was I supposed to think?”

“That I was scouting the way ahead. I did not leave you for very long, and I believed that you were safe here. There is stone not far below the ground here, so our friend could not use his tunnels against you, and at all times I was within earshot. You had no reason to doubt me.”

Roland dismounted and walked to where David sat, leading Scylla behind him.

“Things have not been the same with us since that foul little man dragged you beneath the ground,” said Roland. “I think I may have some inkling of what he said to you about me. My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man’s.

“As for you, you are my friend. You are brave, and you are both stronger than you look and stronger than you believe yourself to be. You are trapped in an unfamiliar land with only a stranger for company, yet you have defied wolves, trolls, a beast that had destroyed a force of armed men, and the tainted promises of the one you call the Crooked Man. Through it all I have never yet seen you in despair. When I agreed to take you to the king, I thought you would be a burden on me, but instead you have proved yourself worthy of respect and trust. I hope that I in turn have proved myself worthy of your respect and trust, for without it we are both lost. Now, will you come with me? We have almost reached our destination.”

He extended his hand to David. The boy took it, and Roland raised him to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” said David.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” said Roland. “But gather your belongings, for the end is near.”

They rode for only a short time, but as they traveled the air around them changed. The hairs on David’s head and arms stood on end. He could feel the static when he touched his hand to them. The wind blew a strange scent from the west, musty and dry, like the interior of a crypt. The land rose beneath them until they came to the brow of a hill, and there they paused and looked down.

Before them, like a stain upon the snow, was the dark shape of a fortress. David thought of it as a shape rather than a fortress itself, because there was something very peculiar about it. He could make out a central tower, and walls and outbuildings, but they were slightly blurred, like the lines of a watercolor painting made on damp paper. It stood at the center of the forest, but all of the trees around it had been felled as though by some great explosion. Here and there David saw the glinting of metal upon its battlements. Birds hovered above it, and the dry smell grew stronger.

“Carrion birds,” said Roland, pointing. “They feed upon the dead.”

David knew what he was thinking: Raphael had entered that place, and had not returned.

“Perhaps you should stay here,” said Roland. “It will be safer for you.”

David looked around. The trees here were different from the others he had seen. They were twisted and ancient, their bark diseased and pitted with holes. They looked like old men and women frozen in agony. He did not want to remain alone among them.

“Safer?” queried David. “There are wolves following me, and who knows what else lives in these woods? If you leave me here, I’ll just follow you on foot anyway. I might even be useful to you in there. I didn’t let you down in the village when the Beast came after me, and I won’t let you down now,” he said with determination.

Roland did not argue with him. Together they rode toward the fortress. As they moved through the forest, they heard voices whispering. The sounds seemed to come from within the trees, emerging through the openings in their trunks, but whether they were the voices of the trees themselves or those of unseen things that dwelled within them David could not say. Twice he believed that he saw movement in the holes, and once he was certain that eyes had stared back at him from deep inside the tree, but when he told Roland, the soldier said only: “Don’t be afraid. Whatever they are, they have nothing to do with the fortress. They are not our concern, unless they choose to make themselves so.”

Nevertheless, he slowly withdrew his sword as he rode and let it hang by Scylla’s side, ready to be used.

The forest was so thick with trees that the fortress was lost from sight as they passed through them, so it came as something of a shock to David when they finally emerged into the blasted landscape of fallen trunks. The force of the explosion, or whatever it had been, had torn the trees from the ground, so that their roots lay exposed above deep hollows. At the epicenter lay the fortress, and now David could see why it had appeared blurred from a distance. It was completely covered by brown creepers that wound around the central tower and covered the walls and battlements, and from the creepers emerged dark thorns, some easily a foot long and thicker than David’s wrist. It might have been possible to attempt to climb the walls using the creepers, but make even the slightest misstep and an arm or a leg or, worse, the head or the heart would be impaled upon the waiting spikes.

They rode around the perimeter of the fortress until they came to the gates. They were open, but the creepers had formed a barrier across the entrance. Through the gaps between the thorns, David could see a courtyard, and a closed door at the base of the central tower. A suit of armor lay upon the ground before it, but there was no helmet, and no head.

“Roland,” said David. “That knight…”

But Roland was not looking at the gates, or at the knight. His head was raised, and his eyes were fixed on the battlements. David followed his gaze and discovered what it was that had gleamed upon the walls from a distance.

The heads of men had been impaled upon the topmost thorns, facing out over the gates. Some still wore their helmets, although their face guards were raised or torn off so that their expressions could be seen, while others had no armor left at all. Most were little more than skulls, and, while there were three or four that were still recognizable as men, they looked as though they had no flesh left on their faces, just a thin covering of gray, papery skin over the bone. Roland examined each one in turn until, at last, he had stared into the faces of every dead man upon the battlements. He looked relieved when he was done. “Raphael is not among those that I can identify,” he said. “I see neither his face nor his armor.”

He dismounted and approached the entrance. Drawing his sword, he sliced off one of the thorns. It fell to the ground, and instantly another grew in its place, even longer and thicker than the one that had been severed. It grew so fast that it almost stabbed Roland in the chest before he managed, just in time, to step out of its way. Roland next tried to hack through the creeper itself, but his sword made only the slightest of cuts upon it, and the damage once again repaired itself before his eyes.

Roland stepped back and returned his sword to its sheath.

“There must be a way inside,” he said. “How else did that knight gain admittance before he died? We will wait. We will wait, and we will watch. In time, perhaps it will reveal its secrets to us.” They settled down after building a small fire to keep the cold at bay and maintained a silent, uneasy vigil on the Fortress of Thorns.

Night fell, or the greater darkness that merely deepened the shadows of the day and served as night in that world. The whispering from the forest, which had continued while they circled the fortress, abruptly ceased with the coming of the moon. The carrion birds disappeared. David and Roland were alone.

A faint light appeared in the topmost window of the tower and then was blocked as a figure passed before the opening. It paused and seemed to stare down upon the man and boy below, then disappeared.

“I saw it,” said Roland, before David could open his mouth.

“It looked like a woman,” said David.

It was the enchantress, he thought, watching over the sleeping lady in the tower. The moonlight shone upon the armor of the dead men impaled on the battlements, reminding him of the danger he and Roland now faced. They must all have been armed when they approached the fortress, yet still they had died. The body of the knight that lay inside the gates was huge, taller than Roland by a foot at least, and almost as broad as him again. Whoever guarded the tower was strong and fast and very, very cruel.

Then, as they watched, the creepers and thorns blocking the gates began to move. They unraveled slowly, creating an entrance through which a man could pass. It gaped like an open mouth, the long thorns poised like teeth waiting to bite.

“It’s a trap,” said David. “It must be.”

Roland stood.

“What choice do I have?” he said. “I must discover what happened to Raphael. I have not come all this way to sit on the ground and stare at walls and thorns.”

He placed his shield upon his left arm. He did not look frightened. In fact, he looked happier to David than he had been at any point since they had met. He had traveled from his own land to find an answer to his friend’s disappearance, tormented by what might have befallen him. Whatever now happened within the fortress walls, and whether he lived or died as a result, he would at last discover the truth about the end of Raphael’s journey.

“Stay here, and keep the fire burning,” said Roland. “If I have not returned by daybreak, take Scylla and ride as fast as you can from this place. Scylla is as much your horse now as mine, for I think she loves you just as she loves me. Remain on the road, and it will lead you eventually to the castle of the king.”

He smiled down upon David. “It has been an honor to travel these roads with you. If we do not see each other again, I hope that you find your home and the answers you seek.”

They shook hands. David did not shed a tear. He wanted to be as brave as he thought Roland to be. It was only later that he wondered if Roland was truly brave. He knew that Roland believed Raphael was dead, and that he wanted revenge upon whomever had killed him. But he also felt, as Roland walked toward the waiting fortress, that part of the knight did not want to live without Raphael, and that death, for him, would be preferable to a life alone.

David accompanied Roland to the gates. As they approached, Roland gazed up at the waiting thorns in apprehension, as though he feared they would close upon him as soon as he was within their reach. But they did not move, and Roland passed through the gap without incident. He stepped over the armor of the knight and pushed open the door of the tower. He looked back at David, raised his sword in a final farewell, and walked into the shadows. The creepers on the gates twisted, and the thorns extended, restoring the barrier across the entrance to the courtyard, and then all was still once more.

The Crooked Man watched what had transpired from his perch on the topmost branch of the tallest tree in the forest. The presences that dwelled within the tree trunks did not trouble him, for they were more scared of the Crooked Man than of almost any other being that dwelled in this land. The thing in the fortress was ancient and cruel, but the Crooked Man was older and crueler still. He stared down upon the boy seated by the fire, Scylla standing close by him, untethered, for she was a brave, intelligent horse and would not easily take fright or abandon her rider. The Crooked Man was tempted to approach David once again and ask him for the child’s name, but he thought better of it. A night alone at the edge of the forest, facing the Fortress of Thorns and watched over by the heads of dead knights, would make him more willing to bargain with the Crooked Man come morning.

For the Crooked Man knew that the knight Roland would never come out of the fortress alive, and David was, once more, alone in the world.

Time passed slowly for David. He fed the fire with sticks and waited for Roland to return. Sometimes, he felt Scylla nuzzle his neck gently, reminding him that she was close. He was glad of the horse’s presence. Her strength and her loyalty were reassuring to him.

But tiredness began to overcome him, and his mind played tricks upon him. He would fall asleep for a second or two and instantly begin to dream. He glimpsed flashes of home, and incidents from the last few days replayed themselves in his mind, their stories overlapping as wolves and dwarfs and the young of the Beast all became part of the same tale. He heard the voice of his mother crying out for him, as she sometimes had when the pain had grown too great for her in her last days, and then her face was replaced by Rose’s, just as his place in his father’s affections had been taken by Georgie.

But was that true? He realized suddenly that he missed Georgie, and the feeling was so surprising to him that he almost awoke. He remembered the way the baby would smile at him, or grasp his finger in his chubby fist. True, he was noisy and smelly and demanding, but all babies were like that. It wasn’t Georgie’s fault, not really.

Then the image of Georgie faded, and David saw Roland, sword in hand, advancing down a long, dark hallway. He was inside the tower, but the tower itself was a kind of illusion, and hidden within it were a great many rooms and corridors, each one containing traps for the unwary. Roland entered a large circular chamber, and in his dream David saw Roland’s eyes widen in disbelief, and the walls ran red as something in the shadows called David’s name…

David awoke abruptly. He was still by the fire, but the flames had almost died out. Roland had not returned. David got up and walked toward the gates. Scylla whinnied nervously as he moved away, but she remained by the fire. David stood before the gates, then reached out and touched his finger warily to one of the thorns. Immediately, the creepers retreated, the thorns retracted, and an opening in the barrier was revealed. David looked back at Scylla and the dying embers of the fire. I should go now, he thought. I should not even wait for the dawn. Scylla will take me to the king, and he will tell me what I should do.

But still he lingered before the gates. Despite what Roland had told him to do if he did not return, David did not want to abandon his friend. And as he stood facing the thorns, uncertain of how to proceed, he heard a voice calling to him.

“David,” it whispered. “Come to me, please come to me.”

It was his mother’s voice.

“This is the place to which I was brought,” the voice continued. “When the sickness took me I fell asleep, and I passed from our world to this one. Now she watches over me. I cannot awake, and I cannot escape. Help me, David. If you love me, please help me…”

“Mum,” said David. “I’m afraid.”

“You’ve come so far, and you’ve been so brave,” said the voice. “I’ve been watching you in my dreams. I’m so proud of you, David. Just a few steps further. Just a little more courage, that’s all I ask.”

David reached into his pack and found the claw of the Beast. He gripped it tightly in his hand before slipping it into his pocket and thought of Fletcher’s words. He had been brave once, and he could be brave again for his mother. The Crooked Man, still watching from the trees, realized what was happening and began to move. He leaped from his perch, descending from branch to branch and landing like a cat upon the ground, but he was too late. David had passed into the fortress, and the barrier of thorns had closed behind him.

The Crooked Man howled with rage, but David, already lost to the fortress, did not hear him.

XXV

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 802