Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [57]
Finally the wind dropped and the rain dwindled to a speckling. Frey’s heart lifted a little. Could it be that the worst was over? He didn’t dare admit the possibility to himself, for fear of inviting a new tempest. Fate had a way of tormenting him like that. The Allsoul punished optimists.
He struggled up another sodden green slope and looked down into the valley beyond. There, at last, he saw the Awakener hermitage where Amalicia Thade was cloistered.
The hermitage sat on the bank of a river, a sprawling square building constructed around a large central quad. It was surrounded by lawns that opened onto fields of bracken and other hardy Highland plants. With its stout, vine-laden walls, deeply sunken windows, and frowning stone lintels, it looked to Frey like a university or a school. There was a quiet gravity to the place, a weightiness that Frey usually associated with educational institutions. Academia had always impressed him, since he’d only a passing acquaintance with it. All that secret knowledge, waiting to be learned, if only he could ever be bothered.
A little way from the hermitage, linked to it by a gravel path, was a small landing pad. There were no roads into the valley. Like so many places in Vardia, it was accessible only from the air. In a country so massive and with such hostile geography, roads and rail never made much sense once airships were invented. A small cargo craft took up one corner of the pad. It was their only link with the outside world, most likely, although there would certainly be other visitors from time to time.
Frey could see the tiny figures of Awakener Sentinels patrolling the grounds, carrying rifles. They issued from a guardhouse, which had been built outside the hermitage. He’d intended to arrive under cover of deepest night, but getting lost in the storm had put him severely behind schedule. There was no way he could approach the hermitage during the day without being seen.
The last of the rain disappeared, and he saw hints of a break in the clouds. Shafts of sun were beaming down on the mountains in the distance, warm searchlights slowly tracking toward him. There was nothing for it but to find a nook and rest until nightfall. Now that the storm had given up and he’d reached his destination, he was tired enough to die where he stood. A short search revealed a sheltered little dell, where he piled dry bracken around himself and fell asleep in the hollow formed by the roots of a dead tree.
HE WOKE TO the sound of engines.
It was night, clear and cold. He extricated himself from the tangle of bracken and stood up. His skin was fouled with old sweat, his clothes were stiff, and he desperately needed to piss. His body ached as if he’d been expertly beaten up by a squad of vicious midgets. He groaned and stretched, then spat to clear the rancid taste in his mouth. That done, he went to investigate what that noise was all about.
He looked down into the valley while he relieved himself against the side of a tree. The moon had painted the world in shades of blue and gray. The windows of the hermitage glowed with an inviting light, a suggestion of heat and comfort and shelter. Frey was looking forward to breaking in, if only to get a roof over his head for a while.
The craft he’d heard was a small black barque, bristling with weapons. A squat, mean-looking thing, possibly a Tabington Wolverine or something from that line. It was easing itself onto the landing pad, lamps on full, a blare of light in the darkness.
A visitor, thought Frey, buttoning himself up. Best get down there while they’re occupied.
He made his way into the valley, staying low in the bracken when he could, scampering across open ground when he had to. He got to the river, where there was better cover from the