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Into the Valley

  A Triton Tale

  by E. David Anderson

  Copyright 2012 E. David Anderson

  Cover Art by Denis Dupanovic

  Chapter I

  Lieutenant Aurelian hacked a trail through the tangles of vines beneath the canopy, his mouth agape as he chugged the air. He stopped to inspect the torn blister on his palm and resigned himself to the fact he was lost. In the back of his mind he had known this for the past three days, but only now could he admit it to himself. The confession frustrated him, but not because his rations were gone or because he had not heeded the Lighthouse Keeper’s warning to stay on the coastal road. He was angry because he had been trained by the greatest military in the Islands, and he had failed in the simple task of land navigation. He twisted the tip of one of his blades into the trunk of a tree, his lip curling back, as he realized it was his own arrogance the had caused him to ignore the old man’s advice and created this situation.

  His father would have been ashamed if he still lived, but it had been two months since his own kinsmen had hunted them down on the seas and murdered him. Two months since he had washed up on the shore like driftwood where the Lighthouse Keeper found him.

  However, there was nothing to be done. Having no direction meant there was no going back, so he continued his path down a spur until near the bottom he heard the tumbling of water. Aurelian labored through a thicket, which hooked his flesh and clothing, and emerged into a glade. The parting trees allowed sunlight to fall on a carpet of flowers having petals the color of sapphires. A river bisected the glade, gurgling its siren call and washing away his concerns if only for a moment.

  The wanderer mopped the sweat from his face as he crossed the clearing, abandoning his pack and sabers along the bank, then cast off his clothing from his broad frame before plunging into the river. Prisms of water collected at the tips of his curly hair and dropped back to the water as he scoured his olive skin with sand. A tattoo written in ancient glyphs was inked onto his right cheek and marked him as a soldier of Akkahellonia, and the green eyes above the tattoo contemplated the opposite bank before their owner immersed himself beneath the water.

  The soldier loitered in the river until he shivered then turned his attention to his clothing, saturated with dirt, sweat, and fresh pollen along the cuff from the flowers. After rinsing them, he flattened the shirt and pants on a rock along the bank to dry, only pausing in his task to listen to the noises of creatures hidden in the trees. By the time he had finished, the sun had lowered its sight so it peeked above the tops of the trees.

  Succumbing to his weariness Aurelian settled back into the bed of flowers and descended into sleep. He dreamed a serpent asked him where he was going, but when Aurelian was mute, the snake coiled about him and squeezed. Its eyes seared him as it repeated the question, and again words failed him. The snake was made of rings of scalding iron, and his skin smoldered beneath its grip until the pain forced him awake.

  One of Triton’s twin moons had replaced the sun and watched him as his naked body writhed. The pain was akin to the sting of a jellyfish and derived from finger-thick vines binding his chest and limbs to the ground. The cords in his neck bulged as he wrestled against the tendrils, but the blue-flowered vines would not slacken their grip. His thoughts refused to coalesce as if drugged and only a single means of escape came to him.

  Aurelian sought to recall the Lighthouse Keeper’s lesson and concentrated on a star, closing off his senses one by one until his mind settled and he no longer felt the vines constrict about his body. The old man told him to extend the calm outwards and use it to sift through the earth. If he could separate the loam and rock from the minerals then he would be able to transform his flesh to a skin of steel at will; however, a few lessons were not enough to overcome two decades of hiding this curse. There were too many levels to maintain his focus and the pain flooded back into his mind.

  He struggled with the vines in silence while the moon and his Little Sister spied down into the clearing like cyclopean observers. He sensed movement in his peripherals along the tree line and stared at a darker patch of shadows until they seemed to melt together, and what he had taken to be the trunk of a tree took form and stepped into the chalky moonlight.

  It had the body of a man, the head of a bull, and covered in black fur, wearing only a loincloth and wrapped sandals.. Aurelian had never met a minotaur as they had all been driven from his lands centuries ago when the First Generals founded his nation.

  Their eyes met then the minotaur raised his mohobi, a war cudgel engraved with runes, in his three-fingered hand and other shadows emerged from the dark until six beasts, distinguishable only by the difference in their height and the shape of their horns, hovered over Aurelian’s prostrate body. Again the leader motioned the mohobi and his companions began tearing the vines from the ground freeing the man and helping him to his feet. Once Aurelian was standing, the leader addressed him in the trade language with a purring accent.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Aurelian,” the man replied also in the trade language. “I’m lost and trying to reach the inner coast.”

  “Governate soldier?” the leader asked, narrowing his eyes, and Aurelian sensed a tension between the others as they waited for his response; however, the tattoo on his cheek should have been enough to make his nationality obvious.

  “Akkahellonian.”

  “Well then,” said the leader,“we are well met. You have chosen a difficult road for those who are not Forest-Walkers, have you not?”

  “As I’ve discovered,” said Aurelian. “If you could help with directions and a little food, I’d be in your debt.”

  He kept an even tone, but his body was wound like a clock spring. Minotaur were not an aggressive people in general, but the smirks and glances of this band raised his hackles, and their conversation felt to be no more than a formality.

  “Dress. Walk with us. I’m Turgor who speaks for Lord Abraham, and I offer you his hospitality.”

  “Lord Abraham?”

  “The master of these lands,” said Turgor. “He is welcoming of all visitors.”

  A couple of the others sniggered, but the leader feigned as if he had not hear them.

  “And my weapons?” asked Aurelian, motioning to the sabers clutched in the leader’s hand. Turgor contemplated the pair of three-foot blades.

  “You will get them when you leave the lord’s company.”

  Aurelian disbelieved the beast man, but he forced his face to conceal his anger. The blades were special to him and were the tokens bestowed to Akkahellonian youths who survive the Warrior’s Trial, denoting their passage into the officer caste.

  He dressed after inspecting the purpling strips where the vines had seared his skin and fell in behind the leader as they advanced into the trees. Aurelian, who was taller than most men, only came to the shoulder of the shortest of the brutes, and escape was not an option for he was still lost. Even if he had known in which direction to flee, the minotaurs’ nature ways would allow neither night nor bramble to slow them should he become the hunted.

  Momentarily resigning himself to his current plight Aurelian asked, “What of those vines?”

  “Dreaming Violets,” said the leader from the point, his gentle voice off-putting for a creature of his size. “The flowers are one plant joined beneath the soil. Its dust puts its prey to sleep then encases them and eats at its pleasure.”

  Aurelian grunted picturing himself devoured alive, and the leader glimpsed Aurelian rubbing the wounds on his forearms.

  “Normally the Dreaming Violet only snares small creatures, but you did it the favor of using its lures as a pillow.”

  There was of a hint o
f malevolence in the leader’s tone, and no kindness in the wicked laughter behind him. They spoke no more as the group slithered its way through the jungle’s ever rising and rockier ground. Whispers of moonlight trickled to the floor over the silent travelers casting the ground in a flecked pattern like a black and white kaleidoscope. After an hour the jungle floor leveled off, and the leader halted the column.

  “Put this on.”

  He nodded to one of the trailing minotaur who had produced a canvas bag from a pouch.

  “Is this necessary?”

  “Lord Abraham values his privacy.”

  “Then point me in the right direction, and I shall be on my way.”

  “Not until you have spoken with Lord Abraham,” said the leader in a controlled voice. “Do not fear, Lieutenant Aurelian, we will hold your hand so you don’t fall.”

  There was more laughter. Aurelian doubted his release; yet, the situation remained out of his favor, and had his companions wished him dead they would have left him to the mercy of the flowers. He complied, and bodies moved to either side of him as the bag covered his head.

  They resumed walking and whenever his toe caught a rock, rough-palmed hands clamped around his arms to steady him until the way became easier. The plunging temperature and echoing steps told Aurelian they had entered a cave; however, the ground became steps leading downward, and, after what felt like an age, they stopped and the bag was removed.

  They were in a passage of rough hewn walls coated with a phosphorescent moss, which cast a pale light that made the black-coated minotaur into featureless phantoms. The leader drew forth a glass rod containing a flame, which projected an orange halo around them. Aurelian tried to mark his way as they marched onward, but the cave walls all looked the same and would branch off in different directions making identification impossible. Eventually they stopped at a natural stone bridge spanning a gorge where two more minotaur holding a similar rod of orange light waited on the other side.

  “Cross here,” said the leader, stepping aside to allow Aurelian passage. His doom would be sealed the moment he arrived on the other side of the bridge, of that Aurelian was confident, so half way across he paused, hearing water running somewhere in the blackness beneath the bridge.

  “Keep moving,” shouted one of the minotaur from the far side. Aurelian peered down into the dark but could see nothing. The leader urged one of the minotaur onto the bridge to herd him across, but before the minotaur could approach him, Aurelian murmured a brief prayer then plunged into the abyss.

  Aurelian’s leap terminated with a roar as the inky waters of a subterranean river erased him from sight. He bobbed to the surface, shocked by the cold impact, and watched twisted, shadowy forms etched in blue light peer over the edge of the bridge until an unseen bend in the river eclipsed them, and, although free from the minotaur, Aurelian found he was now slave to a new master.

  He scrabbled at the unseen wall, but the current was too strong and its icy hand pummeled him against the rock then smothered him beneath the river surface. When teased with air, Aurelian tried to evict the water from his lungs only to have the merciless current overwhelm him again. Aurelian tried to breach but found the entire channel filled leaving no space for air, so he allowed the river to carry him to conserve the depleting oxygen in his burning chest. As if sensing his tenuous hold on life the river dashed him once more against the roof. There was a sharp pain at his temple then he sank into oblivion.