Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [55]
"Akhrasut Neth?" asked Amira. "The Mother's Bed? This hill?"
"Yes."
"Gyaidun told me it is a sacred site to the Vil Adanrath. It is something… more, then?"
Gyaidun snorted, but the belkagen ignored him and went on. "Much more. It is sacred to the Vil Adanrath for many reasons. Have you been to the top yet?"
"No."
"At the highest point of Akhrasut Neth, the bones of the earth break through the soil, a great outcropping of rock jutting from the ground like a weathered fang. At the base, a crevice splits the rock, forming an entrance to a cave that descends into the heart of Akhrasut Neth. The heart is a place of great power. Hro'nyewachu. What the clerics of the west might call an oracle."
"This… oracle," said Amira, "it answers questions? Tells the future? I don't understand."
"Hro'nyewachu grants… enlightenment. At a price. It is the place where initiates of my people go to gain their power. Those who survive are the omah, the chosen leaders of our people. But a precious few have a different calling. The belkagen."
" 'Those who survive.' You mean some do not?"
"Some emerge quite mad. Some few never emerge at all. Their fate is unknown, even to me."
"But you," said Amira, "you have been inside the… the Oracle?"
The belkagen sighed and closed his eyes. "I have. Once, upon my becoming belkagen. And one time more." He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on Gyaidun. "Twelve years ago."
Gyaidun blinked once. Hard. Amira saw a tremor run through him.
"When I learned what had befallen the son of Hlessa and Gyaidun…" The belkagen lowered his head and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath but did not continue.
Amira waited, not daring to speak. Gyaidun had not spoken of his son much at all, and he had barely even mentioned the boy's mother. That night, after the first mention of Erun, Amira had asked. The belkagen had answered her with stony silence, Gyaidun with a cold glare, and Lendri had simply looked away.
"We were desperate," the belkagen continued. Again his voice sounded old and tired, truly the voice of an old man despite his youthful visage. "I sought the wisdom of Hro'nyewachu."
"What did you find?" asked Amira.
"Answers," said the belkagen. He almost gasped the word, then gathered his composure and went on. "Though not the answers I sought. What I told you two nights ago I learned through years of study and searching."
"So all of this tale is for nothing," said Gyaidun, his voice hard and unforgiving. "A history lesson. Your lore will not help us now."
The belkagen sat there, eyes closed and trembling. Amira stared at him, at first thinking he was trembling with fear, but then she saw the iron set of his jaw and his clenched fists. He was furious.
If Gyaidun noticed this, he ignored it. "If your tale is done, it is time for you to le-"
"Fool!" the belkagen threw off his cloak and leaped halfway to his feet toward Gyaidun. A growl that was more savage beast than elf rumbled deep in his chest, and his eyes shone with a feral light all their own. With a squawk, Durja took to the air. Gyaidun's eyes widened, but he did not back down.
The belkagen yelled at Gyaidun in his own tongue. Amira couldn't understand it-though she did catch the word yastehanye at least twice-but she heard the anger in the elf's voice. Gyaidun's nostrils flared and he breathed like a bellows, but he could not hold the belkagen's gaze. Though she had no idea what the old elf was saying, she felt very much as if she were watching an old patriarch giving a misbehaving son a severe reprimand.
"Te, Gyaidun? Te?" said the belkagen after a long tirade in his own speech. "Kaweh rut, kyed!"
Gyaidun sat there glowering, his jaw working as if he were chewing on old bark. Finally, without looking up, he said, "I apologize for my disrespect… Belkagen. I beseech your counsel."
The belkagen glared at him a moment more,