The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [249]
Travis didn't understand. Or did he? With a shaking hand, he gripped the rune of hope the hag Grisla had given him what seemed so long ago now. First came birth, then life, then death. Then birth again, as the circle went round and round.
The strange people reached out, removing the last remnants of his clothes with gentle motions. He shivered but did not resist, too weary to be ashamed of his nakedness. With deft motions they clothed him again in garments of soft, warm aurochs hide, and soon his shivering subsided. A leather cup was pressed into his hands; it held water laced with some bitter herb. He drank it down, and he felt his mind clear and strength flow into his limbs.
Travis stood with the help of several strong, brown hands. He was taller than they; even the men stood no higher than his chin. However, all of them—men and women alike—were powerfully built, their shoulders rounded and heavy.
They were in a narrow valley between two toothy ranges of mountains. The valley was barren of life, its floor covered with a deep layer of ash, its air cold and metallic on the tongue. A few twisted shapes that might once have been trees jutted up from the ground, their blackened limbs cracked and splintered. An eerie feeling of familiarity came over Travis. He had seen these mountains once before, only from the other side.
“This is Imbrifale,” he said softly. “This is the Pale King's Dominion. But that's impossible. The only way in and out is through the Rune Gate.”
The man in orange gestured with his hands. We know other ways through the mountains, ways unknown to the servants of He-Who-Wields-The-Ice. Or to most of them, at least. We knew we would be here when we found you, and so we came.
Again Travis was struck with wonder. “Who are you?”
“I think they're the Maugrim,” said a familiar tenor voice behind him.
Travis turned around, and a feeling of joy almost too powerful to bear came over him. “Beltan!”
He ran to the big man, and they caught each other in a fierce embrace.
“By all the gods, I thought I'd never see you again.”
“So did I,” Travis said, and held him tighter.
At last Beltan pushed him away.
“Who are they, Beltan?” Travis said, aware of the people gathered behind him. “Maugrim—I've heard that word before, I think.”
Beltan glanced at the brown-skinned people. “Falken told us about them. They're the first ones, the people who were here when the Old Gods dwelled in the forests and fields. The stories say they vanished long ago. Only King Kel said the Maugrim still existed. It looks like he was right.”
Finally, Travis understood—that was why they had seemed familiar to him. He had seen paintings of them in books, had seen dioramas in museums where wax facsimiles of them had held spears or squatted over fires, working bone and flint. According to the textbooks, on Earth, the Neanderthals had vanished over thirty thousand years ago.
Only maybe they didn't vanish, Travis. Maybe they went somewhere else.
Beltan touched the hide jerkin they had given Travis. “They've dressed you in orange. Just like their shaman.”
Shaman? Travis glanced over his shoulder. The man who had spoken to him, the one whose hides were stained with ocher, gazed at him, his eyes unreadable.
Travis turned back. “How can you be here, Beltan?”
“We used the gate artifact,” Beltan said, brow furrowing. “As we stepped through, we pictured the city of Omberfell in our minds. It was the only place both of us had been to before that was close to Gravenfist. Vani said it's safer to choose a destination you can envision clearly.” He shook his head. “Only something went wrong. There was a crack in the Void, and we fell through. It seemed like we fell a thousand leagues.”
Travis crossed his arms. “I saw the crack in the Void, too. It pulled me in, just like it did you. But why did we end up here, in this place?”
Because this is where it was broken, the Maugrim man said in his alien language.
Travis shivered. “Where what was broken?”