Chapter XXXVIII: Audacious Travelers
Jonnel Stark, Beyond the Wall
His Brandon was now five years old, and as soon as his nameday came, so did the dreams. Dreams summoning him back beyond the Wall, and bringing his son with him. His son, who he had unknowingly promised to give away long before he even knew of him and how it pained him so, to give him away.
Daena had been most wrathful when she found out his folly, and she roared as if she was Balerion reborn, her dismay heard in all Winterfell. The only reason she had not shunned their marriage bed forevermore was the desire to have more children than he could take away from her - the unreasonable belief that Jonnel was such a fool as to promise another child having unfortunately festered in her mind.
That said, Daena's anger was not the greatest he faced. His father's wrath was silent and cold, and he felt as if he was the most disappointing son a father ever had. He had not forgotten his icy words when he scolded him for his folly, nor his icier words, calling him a fool, when he sought a way to get himself out of his promise. His father had told him he would be a greater fool than he was last if he thought that a promise to the Singers was one he could get out of through wordcraft.
Old Nan had looked at him with her grey and ancient eyes, and he could hear her unspoken words. "Have I not told you tales enough, boy? Did you think I merely wished to put you to sleep? I have told you the dangers of the world, and you thought only to entertain yourself with them and forgot them when you were no longer a child."
The sorrow of his coming home had darkened the results of his expedition. Both the cracked war horn from the Fist of the First Men, and the great black and golden one were hidden under lock and key, the household instructed by Lord Stark to not blow either, on pain of death, and to let no whisper of those reach the ears of any guests of Winterfell, no matter how high might they be.
It pained him greatly to tell his son of his fate, but he was not so cruel as to surrender him to the Singers naive and ignorant, unknowing of his father's ill-thought promise. But dear Brandon did not cry, and he was not surprised either.
"It is time to go then?" he asked. "The small, old man that came into my dreams promised that he would teach me how to fly. When I learn, I shall fly back home to Winterfell and Errold will be very jealous."
So, he knew his fate. But he knew with the mind of a child, uncaring and ignorant of all that it entailed. They promised to teach him how to fly, but he knew of no sorcerer in all his studies of the higher mysteries that could teach a man such. He had spoken with his father, and they had reached the conclusion that it was the ways of skinchanging that the Singers wanted to teach him, to send his mind into the mind of a beast, or a bird for that matter. To what end, none could tell.
They had left Winterfell under the guise of a hunt beyond the Wall, though that excuse left Errold unconsoled that he was left behind, and he had not thought of an excuse for returning without Brandon.
Jon Umber had joined them at Castle Black, blathering on about the good old times of five years ago. They had no excuse for refusing him without slighting him, but Jonnel ground his teeth all day and barely kept his hand still, for the desire to strangle him was ever great.
In the end, it was in the night the boy was taken by the Singers. They had made camp in the Haunted Forest, and Umber had woken in the middle of night to relieve himself and had seen that the boy was missing. He had awoken him and their guards, and, for it to not seem suspicious, they had gathered camp and took their supplies and lit torches and went into the dark forest to seek the boy.
Somehow, Umber had accompanied him in the woods and they had looked for Brandon, and cried his name aloud, though Jonnel knew they would find him not. But Umber was bold and hurried, and as they went deeper and deeper, they realised that they lost their way back.
Rain began to fall upon them, but by some great luck they had found a cave mouth to shelter in before their torches spluttered and died. But Umber was restless, and he thought he heard a cry come from deep within the cave. Jonnel had no choice but to follow him. But they found nothing and as they returned the same way, what was supposed to be an open way, was rock - the way shut. Somehow they had gotten lost yet again.
Umber could not bear to stay still, so he went into a cave tunnel and then another, and he followed him, left with little choice.
They descended and went through tunnels, galleries, and shafts, for Umber could not be stopped and made to see any reason. But Jonnel knew that in whatever direction they went, it was not the way out.
It was dark in the caverns but for some fey or fell reason the torches continued to burn as they descended deeper and deeper.
Hours became days, and their food dwindled, though the torches kept burning without consuming themselves.If he was not certain that he would die so deep beneath the earth, he would have thought more about it. But he was to die of hunger or thirst, and the air grew hotter as they went further, and nothing mattered any more.
But soon they found a hundred kinds of mushrooms growing down there, and at last they came upon a black river, full of blind white fish. The river flowed down, where they could not say, but they followed it, for lack of another road. They descended further into the earth, following the river, and climbing down into pits that seemed bottomless and into sudden shafts, ways long forgotten or never known. What little hope of seeing the sun again washed away with every step and each descent. But both of them had enough manliness in them that they would not wait morosely for their death - let it catch them standing.
But then, they thought they grew mad, for they heard the whistling of the wind, and saw the light of day - at last, for they knew not how many days had passed since they saw it last. But the sky was not the clear blue sky of his native land, but a conglomeration of vapours, moving about, hiding and revealing rays of light. One could call this another cave, a cavern so big that no man could see its end, and through some mysterious means, illuminated as day. A hidden world, deep beneath the one they left.
There was a forest, and how one grew so far beneath the ground, Jonnel bothered not to think or reason. He had long abandoned reason, for even now in this light and wind, after days beyond counting, their torches still burned as bright as ever. If he could not reason that, what need was to reason about other things and happenings, and discoveries? The world had gotten mad or he had just found that it was so since the beginning.
But the forest was not one of three - this was no green wood. Though they rose forty feet into the "sky", if you could call it such, it was a forest of mushrooms, of an undreamed of size. But beneath it the unnatural light did not go, and the forest was dark and damp and cold.
The forest of mushrooms gave way to forests of mosses a hundred feet high, and ferns as tall as pines.
At last, Jon Umber gave word to a thought, uncommonly wise for his person: "If such things, of such small a size in the North, have grown to such great a size deep beneath, in this abyss, how great and enormous its beasts would be?"
As if the world was providing an answer, they stumbled upon bones beneath their feet, as big as the trunks of trees. Jon Umber, despite trying to hide it, grew fearful and frantically glanced back and forth to see if one such beast had seen them. But Jonnel fell prey to his own nature, for even in their dismal state and dire situation, his hands drew to his bow and arrow, to his sword and dagger and axe, and he licked his lips greedily, as if in anticipation of a great hunt.
But no great beast came forth for now and they advanced further in this unusual forest. After all, what better action could they have taken? They might not die today or tomorrow of thirst or of hunger, but they had not found a way out of this great cavern at the centre of the earth, and they would die here, be it tomorrow or a score of years later.
The clouds and vapours in the granite sky became still and motionless, and irradiated by light and thunder. The clouds lowered and grew darker, taking a sinister and gloomy appearance. His hair stood on its ends.
Umber said, rather obviously: "I believe we are going to have bad weather."
Jonnel did not bother to do anything but to give him an exasperated look. A storm forming he could see for himself, and none could call it great weather.
The winds soon started to rage, as if a great and fearsome god of storms had woken from a long slumber, only to find his meal stolen by a thief, so he yelled in great wrath. They shivered under their cloaks. They heard many claps of thunder, beyond counting, and flashes of lighting, hurling from every side.
They sheltered under the great mushrooms and Umber showed a rare measure of brilliance,He took out his axe and carved out one of those enormities, for the flesh of the mushroom was not hard at all, and made a shelter for them, and put a piece of the mushroom as a door to stand against the vagaries of the weather.
They continued the next day their journey, without scope or reason, and their journey grew even weirder. Jon had stepped upon the ground, and heard a crack under his feet. He bent down and in his hand he took a skull, clearly human in origin, and he yelled out in shock: "Are then we not the first to stumble upon this?"
Jonnel's thought came and went with great speed, and he remembered his maester's lessons and Old Nan's tales and he thought the truth revealed to him:
"It is said that three thousand years ago, two brothers, by the names of Gendel and Gorne, ruled as Kings-Beyond-the-Wall. It is said they gathered their folk and marched them past the Wall, through some path through caves beneath found by Gorne. An ancestor of mine defeated his host when they emerged in the North, and Gendel it is said to have survived in some legends, and fled with some men back beyond the Wall. But they say that he got lost along the way, and that his descendants still dwell in forgotten caves, eating those who stumble upon Gorne's Way."
"Marvellous! Just what I needed, men to feast upon my flesh. If I had desired to have my body eaten by cannibals, I would have gone to Skagos. At least there I would have died with the sun or moon and stars above my head, not here forgotten for all ages." cried out Jon.
That skull was not the last of the human bones they stumbled upon. At last they came upon a living beast in these lands, a creature somewhat akin to the woolly mammoths of the lands beyond the Wall. And in their midst were men, hunting them. Men of Gendel's people most likely, descended from his warriors and spearwifes. But they were pale skinned and diminished. Perhaps they had spent decades or centuries in dark caves before they found this great and bright cavern, full of life and they had never again given birth to healthier offspring.
They did not stop to greet him, for perhaps they had no language of men to speak of with him. For all that Jonnel knew the Old Tongue, he doubted that after three thousands years underground they spoke it the same. Perhaps in the darkness, they had forgotten names for the things that peopled the lands under the sun, and once they had reached this great cavern they had fashioned these words anew. And most of all, Jon feared that he would have been slain and cooked and eaten.
They avoided these misshapen men in the days, and weeks, and months following, never staying too long in one place, and hunting the great beasts of this land. They fed themselves from the mushroom-trees and ate of those beasts and creatures. Jonnel took no trophies save their teeth, of which he had made a chain in the fashion of the maesters, for he had no means of carrying anything greater, and none would see them so he could boast of it - it was pointless. And it was the hunt, not the trophy, that gladdened Jonnel's heart.
In his moments of respite, though he knew it to be a folly and none would read those scrolls, he put in words his journey to this place on whatever parchment he had had with him, written with the blood of the beasts he had slain. And thus strange happenings turned to strange tales.
For all they had shunned the Gendelings and their dwellings - for they had observed dark rituals and heard the sinister sounds of chants dedicated to the new, queer gods they had fashioned for themselves, they stumbled upon a party of them. As Jonnel had supposed, their tongue had long diverged from the Old Tongue, and few words he could understand of them, and they of him.
They had fought them and slew them in great numbers, for their weapons of bone and stone were no match to his and Jon's castle-forged steel.
But as death had not come for them, in Jonnel's heart the yearning for home, for wife and children grew greater with each passing day. When they had stumbled again on tunnels and caverns, though they were not the same through which they had descended, hope grew in their heart and they gathered supplies and ventured inside, looking for a way out.
And they found it after many failures and tries. But when the day came and they saw the day again, it was not in some northern forest. They came to light in a jungle, full of broken ruins, after they had passed through labyrinthine caves and vast chambers of carven stone (once lived, now long abandoned), in which Jonnel felt the presence of ancient and malevolent, slumbering gods, that would have surely brought a man of lesser will to madness. Of those neither he, nor I would speak or write about, lest the reader be brought himself to madness.
And when they set foot upon the ground, Jonnel and Jon, their twin torches sputtered and went out, at last.
In this jungle they stumbled again into men who spoke a language they did not know. But these men were not the misshapen Gendelings, for they were taller, seven to eight feet, and their beauty was starkly distinct from the deadly pale and hideous faces of Gendel's children.
But that is another tale, and another adventure, of whom we shall write later. It would not be the last our two adventurers had before they reached home and hearth again. Leng, the smoky ruins of a great and fallen civilization, green hells and queer stones and great beasts, grand and marvellous things to be told.
NOTE: We back to Jonnel, and this time I give you a pastiche of Jules Verne's
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Hope you enjoy it and eager for feedback.
