“Patience my friend. Obrett will tell us when it is safe. He will have good reason for us to stay here.”
Ispen grunted in reply, and went back to daydreaming of the great river that crossed the countryside from his mountain city to the sea.
It was not until much later that day that they finally got word. Ispen had given up watching, and gone to sleep, and Jacob was wandering aimlessly around the cavern.
“Time to go.” Came words that originated from only one source, though something was different.
“Obrett?” Jacob thought as Ispen jumped up and started coaxing the horses out of the cavern.
“Brendan.” Came the reply. “The creature has been scouring the region, but has now moved West of the mountains. They must have given up. Ride like the wind, my friends, and when you get to the ruin, pick up a stone from the outside, and bring everything with you into the tower.”
“About bloody time,” Ispen growled.
Going out into strong daylight after residing in the dim cave for so long resulted in a lot of squinting for both men and horses, but eventually they got used to it enough to ride as fast as possible up out of the gully and West towards the ruin. The staccato clack of the iron-shod hooves on the hardpan raised enough noise to waken the dead, but they encountered nobody as they fled to the questionable safety of the tower. They had yet to experience the wonders Obrett said were there. The land smoothed out rapidly, becoming the familiar dry rocky desert as the horses galloped. The wizards urged them on in a frenzy, for both were aware of how exposed they were. Trails of dust marked their passing, and with no breeze to get rid of it the trails just hung in the air like marker signs, great brown arrows pointing towards the two galloping horses. They trusted to Brendan though, and did his bidding. Ispen once again managed to question the reasoning behind riding the wrong way, but even as he was doing so the ruined tower became visible in the distance. The monolith rose from the ground like a saviour, offers of its protection spurring them on. Time seemed to slow as they watched around them for any signs of company. The horses breathing became laboured, not just because they were tired after such a dead run, but because every moment became stretched with expectation and a latent fear. The sound of their hooves hitting the floor appeared to slow, and the growing ruin in front of them did not appear to get any larger. Ispen imagined that he could see specks of dust floating in the breeze that was created by their passing. Movements became languid, the horses slowed to a crawl and he could hear the pounding of blood in his own ears, a muffled thud drowning out all other noise.
And then they were there, the illusion of lassitude broken. Both men jumped down from their horses as quickly as they could manage, and while Ispen held the horses, Jacob scoured the terrain for some suitable stones. Once they would have never considered any rock other than their own personal focus stones, but Obrett had shown them a wider world, a world in which the skills of the caster were much more important than the properties of a rock. Suitable rocks in hand, Jacob held onto the horses while Ispen, a man much more physically imposing, opened the doors. Forcing the sand that had blocked up behind out of the way, he widened the doors to let the barrelled bodies of the horses through. The horses were skittish at the prospect of another dark entrance, but they were eventually cajoled inside. The doors shut with a boom, and the wizards and their horses were left with a cool darkness and the slightest hint of flowers for company.
“So what happens now?” Jacob asked.
“You sit on your horses and focus through the stones.” Came the instant reply as if from right beside them.
“That simple eh?” Jacob raised the stone to look at it, and closed his eyes.
“Not quite. There is a method to my madness.” Obrett described in great detail what they needed to do, and led them through the process. It was a focus unlike one they had ever performed, and it left them feeling somewhat surreal.
“You can open your eyes now,” Obrett said in a friendly voice, and the two wizards found themselves looking down at the smiling faces of Obrett, Brendan and three other people.
“Wow, that was a hell of a thing,” Jacob grinned.
“You ain't seen anything yet,” Brendan said as he helped them calm the extremely confused horses. If the wizards were left bemused, the horses had no idea. Introductions were made, and the two newcomers were taken up to the main floor of the tower to view the world that although the same, was emphatically different.
“So you focussed to speak to us, but did not use a stone?” Jacob asked as he stared at the enormity of the compulsion focus emanating from Raessa.
“Indeed. There is no need for the stones here. Try it for yourself.”
“Is there a limit?”
Obrett shook his head slightly. “I spoke to my three students yesterday. They are alive and well, on a ship bound for Caighgard. There is no limit to distance. Just make sure you have an image and a memory of the person to cling to when you focus. It will make it much easier for you.”
“The reason you brought us back,” Jacob murmured. “A good thing, too. We would have probably starved or killed the horses before we got anywhere near our city.”
Ispen had already closed his eyes in concentration, and in this reality they could feel the focus much more acutely. It was like a tangled web reaching out towards the East, and it was being reciprocated. “They are with us. They will start travelling here at once.”
“What, some friends of yours?”
“The entire order. They recognise the danger inherent in what I have told them, and are acting to prevent it. It seems that I was not the first person to approach them regarding this. Discreet enquiries have been made by another party, one looking to test the water, if you will pardon the pun. The river guild will be subjects to nobody but themselves, but in this they will act as one body.”
Immense relief filled the room. “Thank the Gods,” Obrett proclaimed.
“You do so, my friend. I will thank Panishwa for granting my order the wisdom to listen to sage advice.” Ispen was not joking.
Obrett turned to ask Jacob's opinion, but he too had gone into the trance-like state of the focus. As different stones had separate qualities, so did the focussing practice of people. Obrett could feel the focus piercing the sky around them, and gradually settling on a point in roughly the same direction as Ispen. A startled look crossed Jacob's face, and then the Life wizard opened his eyes wide and looked down at them. “My order is already halfway here, and have been attacked by wizards wielding fire.” He sat down on the stone steps, thanking good Jettiba for his capture in quiet words. “Several have been killed, burned alive by some dread conjuring.” Jacob did not look up as he spoke. “Had I not been captured, I might have been one of them. Anyway, they have heard of the unrest in the Duchies, and where possible, they have warned other orders against it.”
”How is that possible for one order to know so much?” Tani asked as she handed out goblets of her spring wine.
“My lady, the order of Life is part of a greater good that is smaller than the rest of the orders, as a result of having fewer sects. My personal guild is in primacy, meaning that we are the chief guild of Life. This affords us certain insights into the balance of this world. Unrest, discord, they all drive us to maintain the balance by committing acts of good, all within the Old Law of course. My order has reacted to the waves of evil that radiate from the central duchies. They will do their best to arrest the discord.”
“Will they fight?” Asked Ispen, who was personally unsure of what his own guild would actually do.
“If need be they will fight. Corner a badger, and it is most dangerous.” Jacob meant that his guild would not attack, but they would aggressively defend themselves. How they would go about it was a matter for each person there to try and second-guess, for Jacob was saying nothing. All there knew the tenets of the Old Law however, and they understood that a certain moral flexibility could easily turn defence into something akin to attack. It seemed tha
t some had already crossed that threshold.
“I am glad for you, friend Jacob,” Brendan vocally applauded the Life Wizard. “Your guild seems to have made it through the initial attack. I daresay it will be not the last. Will they stand to the end?”
“My friend, the Guild of Life will always stand. As long as there is life, then the God Jettiba has a priority on this world, and as long as Jettiba graces us with her benevolence we will always have a guild.”
Brendan sighed. I remember the exhausted state of my fellows even before the backlash of the scrying focus that sent many of them sprawling to the feet of Divine Ilia. Would that our Gods watched over us a little more actively.”
Jacob laid a consoling arm on Brendan's shoulder. “My friend, it has ever been thus. The gods created this world, but it is for us to decide its fate. They do not see us as right or wrong. We just are. We just exist. There is no one person on this planet that is so important that the Gods will renounce their exile and come down from the heavens to do more than observe.”
“No,” Obrett disagreed, “there is one person. Whoever finds the Tome of Law had better hope that the Gods are on his side, for they will have plenty of enemies. If the Tome is important enough to make the Witch Finder try and bribe the Orders to engage in battle with innocent people, for him to build a whole temple dedicated to something he only hopes to have, and to engage all manner of arcane arts in order to find a person he does not know, then this person is in great danger already. There is only one answer that should occupy our minds in this place. We should be looking, as Garias is, to locate the person who is destined to find the Tome of Law, for only in the hands of that person is anything possible.”
“Well where do we start?”
Obrett looked up at the walls of the tower, lit by the eerie blue glow of the Raessan focus. It was never going to be easy, but then nothing worthwhile was ever easy to accomplish in his opinion. Not that simple things needed to be full of worthless toil, but it seemed that it always worked out that way. “We start with what we know,” He said finally, “we start with what we know, with those that we know best. From there we will have to tread unknown paths, but have faith. We have been put here for a reason, and we must believe that what we do is for the best.”
Ispen grinned at the prospect, while Jacob gazed at the blue glow to the West. Brendan looked at his friend, a twinkle in his eye. “Well you couldn't have picked a prettier place to start from.”
* * *
“Watch there, the crest of the ridge.”
Mavra squinted as she peered into the distance. The ridge in question was over a mile off, and hid the movements of mercenaries out for one reason: to hunt them down. She was being taught a lesson in observation by one of the tribesman, a dour-faced man called Hawkeye, in no way a relation to the grieving Hawknest. Hawkeye was the best of the scouts in the ever-growing group of tribesman that had seemingly congregated out of nowhere. Mavra had been constantly surprised. She had heard that a great many of them had escaped their forest home when it was attacked by an army, the steep sides to the valley, the only saving grace as the entire attacking force had to come down a path only wide enough for one man at a time. By the time the army had assembled at the foot of the valley, they were long gone, those that were going. That army had not been heard of since. Mavra wondered what had happened to it.
“There it is, once more.”
As Mavra watched, a flock of birds flew into the air, coming into view as they crested the ridge. “What does that tell us?”
Hawkeye did not look at her as he spoke, but remained focussed upon the distant horizon. “The birds scattered in all directions as they flew. Something disturbed them. They would not normally fly in such a way.”
“What if it was something like a fox?”
“No, a fox wouldn't cause such a havoc, and not repeatedly. That is the third time we have seen birds fly like that since we have been watching.”
Mavra would only admit it to herself, but that had only been the first time she had seen such an occurrence, but then she did not profess to having anywhere near the eyesight that Hawkeye possessed. “And you are sure of what you see?”
“Lady, that many disturbances could only be caused by something big,” the scout replied. “We knew that they were going to move eventually, and they are at least trying to be careful in their movements.”
“Not careful enough though,” she observed, and Hawkeye gave her a nod of agreement. Reading her face as he read the signs in the distance, he knew that she had seen enough, and began to crawl slowly back through the grass, lest they cause exactly the same disturbance and let any mercenary scouts discover their location. Mavra appreciated the scout's judgement, and followed him out of the tall grass. Mingled with low bushes, it made ideal camouflage, and they wormed their way back through the bushy gorse without being caught by too many of the non-lethal but still very painful barbs that grew on it. The only problem would have been the snagging of swords, but Hawkeye had prevented that with the simple statement that they would leave any weapons near the entrance to their hiding place. The less metal they wore, the less likely a beam of sunlight would catch upon it. As luck would have it, it was a cloudy day, though the visibility was poorer for it.
When they escaped the gorse and retrieved their weapons, they jogged lightly away down the hill where they had lain for a long time while they watched for signs. It was one side of a gentle valley, the other side also a ridge of hills, those being the hills now traversed by the mercenaries in an attempt to hide their numbers and tactics from any prying eyes. From there they kept up a steady jog, only pausing when it became apparent that they were likely to cause startled birds to fly squawking in all directions. Mavra was again astounded at the changes in her own body. No longer was there a young girl without strength who dreamt of nothing more than sewing in a wagon. Now she had lost all puppy fat, and was lean to the point of gauntness. Were she not filling out with muscle as well as the normal transition from girl to young adult, then one might consider her underfed. She jogged beside the ultra-fit tribesman with no concern whatsoever, knowing that even when they got back to the village she would still have enough energy left to fight. The leather she now wore as armour was light and supple; treated with various resins it was still able to deflect most blows even if it hurt to take them. But it was light, and she could run in it so it was usable. Worries tore at her. Concerns plagued her. There was an army of mercenaries scouring the countryside for her people and as she ran Mavra fretted that all she had done to date, the warning of villages and the liberation of her family would not benefit her one iota. She would not voice her worries; they seemed to be the things that a leader would worry about and keep to herself, and Mavra could guarantee that everybody else had the same concerns. They themselves were a force to be reckoned with, that much was proven by the way the mercenaries were moving. A more reckless crew would have come thundering in at them with no regard for what might be lying in wait. She voiced her concerns as she jogged along.
“That might be interpreted two ways, Mistress,” Hawkeye replied, his mind as analytical as any of his fellows. “Respect, or caution.”
“Are not both the same thing?”
“Maybe. They could respect you for the bold tactics you employed in releasing their prisoners and be acting like this because they expect you to do the same thing again, or they could be cautious not out of regard for you but because it is their way.”
“A mercenary band that sneak? That is most unusual, is it not?”
“Very much so, and for that we should be wary. You should assign somebody to get closer and find out what it is that they are doing sneaking around countryside that as good as belongs to them.” It was clear that Hawkeye was volunteering right now for the job, so eager was he to try and put to rights the murder of his kinswoman. Such dedication was admirable, but Mavra knew that she had more to worry about with those left alive rather than with those that had passed on. As long as they
were willing to follow her lead, then she was going to keep them out of danger for as long as possible. “We will worry about that when we reach the encampment,” she said, and left it at that.
'The encampment' was a stretch of grassland that sat neatly between two villages. It was about a mile wide at its narrowest point, and had ample room for manoeuvres. Many of the tribe slept under the stars, seasons of camping that way not an easily dispatched habit. Some of the former prisoners had lodged with villagers, the kind-hearted people doing whatever they could to aid the folk that had appeared from nowhere to warn them about what was coming. Many were scared, some had fled, but most rallied to the cause. The men of the two villages all jumped to defend what was theirs, as did many of the women. Those that couldn't helped in other ways, sharpening their gardening implements to the point that they were only recognisable as tools of war, cooking food, preparing bandages against the worse of two outcomes for there was definitely going to be a reckoning. The encampment was also where Mavra made her home, with the tribes that had become her family. Cahal and Jaden had remained with her, as had her parents. She did not worry that Gwyn, Anita, Layric and Venla had all taken rooms in houses, for they were there at the dawn of every day, and stayed with her until the end of every evening. This was a concerted effort on everybody's behalf. They passed the nearest building, getting waves of greeting from any of the villagers that happened to be nearby and headed for the wagon that had become the hub of everything that occurred between them. There was a crowd of tribesmen around one edge, and Mavra had to forcibly push her way through to get to the centre of them. At the entrance to the wagon Aynel and Arden stood guard, two dark-haired monoliths, stern faced and grim.
“What has happened here?” Mavra asked, worried suddenly that her concerns had manifested themselves in the guise of some disaster or other.
“Mistress, Handel awaits you inside,” Aynel said solemnly, and beckoned her forward.
Eager to see what had befallen one of the foremost amongst the Merdonese, Mavra almost jumped up into the wagon, catching her shin on the wooden steps, and remembering at the last moment to conduct herself properly. She opened the doors of the caravan slowly. Inside, Venla was sat opposite Handel, who looked up at her with reverence in his eyes. “Mistress, I have been visited.”
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 48