20.

Kyara continues to be drawn to follow the river.

20.

 

An hour before dawn, Kyara was dressed and was back on the road.   Only the Inn’s early rising cooks saw her take her horse from the stable and ride out of town.    The road closely followed the Toricii River which babbled and surged powerfully in the pre-dawn darkness.

She could see only a hint of the river through the trees which lined the banks, and it seemed wide, dark and cold.

Kyara kept glancing toward the river, searching it for… something.    She couldn’t let herself ask for what she was searching.

She watched the sun rise and then crest high in the sky and she kept to the road the entire time.    She avoided several groups travelling south and kept her helm down, not wanting any to see that she was a woman travelling alone.

The day was clear and late in the afternoon she arrived in the Earldom of Midgranne.  An hour before sundown, she reached the little village of Wheete, which did not have any inns.     Briefly she debated camping out of town in the fields, but after giving her horse a rest, she decided to ride at night, utilizing the moonlight and a clear sky to make up some time.    She wouldn’t admit it to herself, but Kyara was a bit nervous to sleep, for fear of having a nightmare like the one she’d had the previous night.    So moving at a slow pace so as to not exhaust her steed, she trudged along the empty road by moonlight.

Hours passed and Kyara found herself dozing lightly in the saddle.   Jumbled dreams of her parents and siblings, Luke Penrook and the Toricii River flowing cold and lifeless on an eternal journey southward.

Thankfully, her horse kept to the road and it was almost sunrise before she came fully awake with a start.    Looking around wildly as she regained her facilities, she found her horse had stopped on the side of a road under a brilliant orange Maple tree that was shedding it’s leaves all around.

“Oh, you’re tired, aren’t you?”  She said to the animal, patting his neck as she climbed stiffly off his back.    As she was unbuckling the saddle to let her horse rest from his all night trek, she suddenly became aware that the rushing sound of the river had changed to a muted roar that seemed to hint of a plunge down a falls.

Curious, she tied the reins to a tree branch and gave her steed his oat bag, then in the pre-dawn light, wandered off the road to finally see the river up close.

The roar grew louder as she weaved in between maple trees for a short distance until the river suddenly appeared in view.

It was very wide - maybe a quarter of a mile across, dark blue in the early light and cold.   It apparently had flowed here for many eons, for it had carved itself down so that the river was twenty feet below the rocky banks on each side.

As she neared, she was surprised to find a handful of human children - ranging in age from toddler to teen, standing in a group peering out into the river ahead, which seemed to be the source of the roaring sound.

In the dim light, she could see that the river suddenly plunged downward into a gaping dark hole in the ground that looked as if it was the mouth of a huge underwater cave.

She heard the children talking softly amongst themselves as she crept up unseen behind them.

“Well, it’s certainly gone now,”  The oldest boy was telling the others, “Probably just an old log from upstream.”

“Jon, I know it was a body!”  A girl nearly his age protested.   Kyara got the distinct feeling that all the children were siblings, probably from a nearby farm.

So as to not scare them half to death, she cleared her voice as loudly as she could manage, and they all turned around in alarm.   

She knew that they would see an armed figure behind them, so, taking a crazy chance, she quickly lifted off her helmet and smiled at them.

“Good morning,”  She said in her own voice.   Her chainmail coif would hide her elven ears, so maybe they’d just think that she was a female human militiaman, which was probably strange enough to see, “I don’t mean to frighten you, but I heard your voices when I was riding along and I was wondering what you were staring at?”

“Why were you riding on the road so early… ma’am?”  The oldest boy asked, looking her over to verify to himself that she was indeed a woman.

“I rode all night on the road; I’m following the river there.”

“Well, you’ve come to the end, I’m afraid.”

“The end?”  Kyara asked, finding the words scared her for some reason, “So I’m near St. Catherine’s?”

She had remembered what Luke told her about the river terminating close to the convent.

“You’ve just crossed over into St. Catherine’s Duchy, ma’am.   The border is about half a mile up the road.”

“I made really good time then!”  She said, partially to herself, amazed that she had crossed Midgranne in less than a day.

“The road is mostly downhill from Midgranne and it cuts through at its narrowest part.   So are you an apprentice going to begin your postulancy?”

Kyara had no idea what a ‘postulancy’ was, but she suspected it had to do with becoming a nun, “I don’t know yet.    I was mainly just following the river.”

The teenaged girl rushed over to her excitedly, “Were you following the body?”

“Tiena!”  The older boy snapped, seeing Kyara’s surprise.

“Body?”  Kyara asked, paling.

“Yes!   I saw it, while I was taking the cows out to the east meadows!”

“Tiena, stop it right now or I’ll tell dad!”

“I saw it, I tell you!”  She turned back to Kyara, “It was a man floating downstream, but he was all white and looked like there was ice all caked around him.    That happens sometimes this time of year when the river stays colder when it leaves the mountains.    We see logs caked in ice and even dead animals once in a while, but never a man!”

Kyara’s heart pounded and she felt somewhat faint, but she tried not to appear too excited, “Could you describe him?   Anything about him at all?”

The girl thought for a moment, “Well, he looked ‘bulky’ like he was wearing heavy fur skins or maybe armor.   It was too dark to tell for sure and by the time I ran and got Jon he had disappeared down into the hole.”

Kyara felt her stomach rise up into her throat, “The hole?”

“Yeah, we call it ‘the hole’; it’s the entrance into the underground lake.   It’s a huge cave they say, but you can’t get a boat down there ‘cause the water completely fills the cavern and it is too dangerous and cold to dive down and see where it goes.”

“So you don’t know where the water goes?”  Kyara asked numbly.

“Well, no-one knows for sure,”  Jon spoke up, “but most feel that it connects underground somehow with the thermal spring that feeds St. Catherine’s Pool”

Jon’s words made her remember that Luke had told her the same theory about the river.

“So… this body that you saw… what would happen to it once it goes into the underground cave?”

Jon and his sister shrugged, “I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Oh,”  She said, frustrated and suddenly weary.

“You ought to go speak to some of the nuns if you want to know more about the pool.     The convent is about six miles down the road.”   Jon told her.

“Mother Julia is the prioress,”  Tiena added, “But I heard that she’s off somewhere visiting someone, so she might not be there.  There’ll be someone there that can help you, though.   I’m sure of that.”

Kyara just stared blankly at the river as it fell down into the hole in the ground.   In the slowly brightening sky, the river had taken on a deep blue color that seemed almost supernatural in appearance.

“What a fool I’ve been,” She said aloud to herself.

“Ma’am?”   The oldest boy asked, seeing her emotion.

“Nevermind,”  Kyara sighed, “How far did you say the convent was?”

“About six miles, ma’am,” Jon responded, “If you want, one of us can lead you there.”

Kyara smiled weakly, “That’s kind of you, but not necessary.   What you could do is sell me some fresh oats for my horse.”

 

The change of topic to common things brightened the mood and soon the children had not only brought some feed for her horse but some freshly baked bread and cheese for her.   Kyara thanked them and carefully avoided some of their questions.    She led them to believe that she was just a woman in the militia of a distant duchy (which she didn’t name) that had joined up to accompany her brother, who had died trying to cross the Toricii River some miles upstream.   Now she was alone and uncertain of what to do and had debated becoming a nun. 

She didn’t know if they believed her or not, but they didn’t challenge the story and it explained her interest in the body that they had supposedly seen floating down the river.

“I want to take my brother’s body back home to bury him amongst his people,”  She lied to them and they had just quietly nodded.

For a few hours she rested her horse as she sat and spoke to the children.   But their mother’s voice summoning them back for some chore signaled their departure and they all wished her good luck.

She thanked them by giving each of them a gold coin, which almost scared them as they had never seen such a display of wealth for their generosity.    Jon had told her that they couldn’t accept it, but she had insisted firmly and after thanking her probably a hundred times each, they had rushed off, excited with their pay.

Kyara knew that she shouldn’t have been as generous, as they would tell their parents and within hours the whole countryside would know that a mysterious woman wearing armor carrying an abundance of gold, but riding alone was passing through.

She didn’t plan on being around when their neighbors came looking for her.

So about three hours after sunrise, she resaddled her horse and resumed following the road that the children assured her would take her to the front step of St. Catherine’s convent.