by Tim Stead
“Don’t forget the other two,” she called back over her shoulder.
She managed to get them safely down onto the dresser shelf and climbed back down. There was dust on her clothes from the jars and she was brushing it off when the old woman reappeared.
“It’s all vanity with you young folk,” she said.
She was tempted to reply, but bit the words back.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked instead.
“Want paying, do you?”
“Not at all.” She was surprised by the idea, but something did occur to her. “But I’d be grateful for anything you could tell me about the road that passes by here.”
The old woman stared at her, puffed on her wooden pipe for a moment. “Aye, fair enough,” she said. She bustled across the room to a cupboard and took out a flask. She gave it to her visitor. “Water. You’ll need it. The road gets hot a ways along, and then there’s temptation, but you’ll be right if you look to your hands and feet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not now,” the old woman said. “But you will, and you’d best be on your way. Times a passing.” She almost pushed her visitor to the front door, and as soon as she was outside the door slammed and the traveller found herself once more in the garden, clutching the flask she’d been given. She walked to the road and set off once more, thinking about what the old woman had said. The crone had been almost deliberately, provocatively rude, but in the end she had helped – perhaps.
She opened the flask and sniffed at the contents, finding nothing but sweet water. She took a sip. There was nothing wrong with it that she could detect. She walked on.
It grew hotter.
The woods surrendered to open grassland, and as she walked the grassland became pale and withered away, leaving nothing but sand. She stopped and looked back. The forest and the grass, so recently her companions, had vanished. Now it was pale desert as far as the eye could see in every direction, except for the darker line of the road.
She opened the flask and drank from it, silently thanking the old woman. The water was still sweet and cold, despite the heat.
The sun rose higher in the sky and it grew impossibly hotter. Her hair stuck to her face and she took off her jacket and tied it around her waist. It seemed that she walked for hours and there was nothing but yellow sand, blue sky, the sun and the road. It was a perfect universe of discomfort. Without the old woman’s flask she would have suffered greatly, but as much as she drank from it, it always seemed to remain full and pleasantly chilled.
It was magic, of course. The whole place was magic.
She noticed a stain on the sand far ahead, or perhaps on the sky. It was hard to say where one ended and the other began. As she walked on, unconsciously quickening her step, the stain turned into something green and distant – an oasis perhaps. The green turned into tall trees, shrubs, like a small forest that squatted across the road.
It was a relief to walk out of the sun into those first cool shadows. She stopped and used the flask to tip water over her face, allowing it to run down her neck and dampen her shirt. It was a delightful feeling.
Temptation, the old woman had said. She looked at her hands and feet, but saw nothing special.
She walked on, and it grew steadily cooler. If there had ever been a desert close to this place it had passed beyond her perception. Now she was in a forest once more.
She heard water.
At first she thought it must be a waterfall, but as she came closer she saw a small lake with a fountain of crystal clear water looking quite out of place in the middle, tinkling its invitation.
Temptation.
She saw a woman down by the bank, and almost at the same moment the woman saw her.
“Thank the gods,” the stranger said, her voice tinged with relief.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m supposed to be doing some sort of test, but I’m trapped here.” She pointed to the grass. The traveller could see, now that she looked carefully, that it was wrapped around the woman’s boots.
She could see the grass looked the same all the way from the path down to where the other woman was trapped. If she tried to go to her aid she, too, would be seized. To test the theory she waved her booted foot over the nearby grass and saw it rise up in anticipation.
Not that way then.
She plucked her knife from her belt. “Here, see if you can cut yourself free with this.” She tossed the knife. It was only a few yards and the trapped woman caught it. She began to hack at the grass around her feet.
“It’s no use,” she said after a while. “It grows back as fast as I cut it.”
Hands and feet, the old woman had said. Look to your hands and feet. She crouched down by the edge of the path and waved her hand over the grass. It didn’t move. She moved closer, reaching out and touching the greensward with her fingers. It didn’t respond. Even when she took hold of the stuff and plucked it out it remained inert.
It wanted her feet, it seemed. She couldn’t see how that would help. She could hardly walk on her hands as far as the woman, and even if she managed such a feat should she couldn’t free her.
A thought occurred.
She knelt at the side of the road and carefully unlaced her boots, one after the other. She took them off. She stood and walked to the edge of the grass again. She raised a bare foot and waved it above the grass.
Nothing.
She stamped, once, making the motion as quick as she could, a touch and then away again.
Nothing. The grass didn’t stir.
Hands and feet, could it really be so simple?
She stood on the grass, feeling it between her toes, softer than she expected, almost like a thick carpet. She wriggled her toes. The grass was just grass.
“Take your boots off,” she called out.
“My boots?” The woman looked confused.
“The grass will leave you alone if you take your boots off.”
Her meaning got through, and for a minute or so the woman struggled to unlace her boots, but it was apparent that the grass was getting in the way. “I can’t,” she said.
“Cut the laces, then.”
It took a moment. She had the satisfaction of seeing the woman pull her feet free. She rolled away from her imprisoned footwear and rose carefully to her feet. She hurried over to the path.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“It didn’t seem to want to capture my hands. I wondered what the difference was.” She decided not to mention the old woman.
“Clever,” the woman said. She seemed a few years older than her rescuer, and had thick auburn hair tied back in a simple tail. She winced and looked down at her feet. “Now I have no boots,” she said. She eyed the boots lying on the path.
“It’s better than being trapped.” The Traveller quickly sat by her boots and put them back onto her feet, lacing them tightly. The other woman still had her knife.
“It’s going to be a rough journey with no boots,” she said. The statement raised a little tension between them
“My boots wouldn’t fit you anyway.” They laughed together and the tension leaked away. “You can walk on the side of the road now. The grass is soft,” she added.
“But this place, it changes. Who’s to say what’s ahead?”
Her boots securely on her feet the rescuer stood and faced the woman she’d rescued. “We can help each other,” she said. “I don’t suppose you know your name?” A shake of the head. “Nor do I, but we should have names if we’re working together, don’t you think?”
The other shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. You’re a strange one though. You want to share the prize?”
“Prize?” For a while she had forgotten what this was all about, she had been so taken up with the problem at hand. “Oh, that. I don’t think we get half. I think we get the same – each person gets the whole prize.”
“It said this on your note?”
; “No. But it makes sense. Everything here is magical, so perhaps the prize is magic as well.”
“That’s pretty thin reasoning.”
“Besides, there might be some problems that we have to solve together. I think I’m going to call you Red.”
“The hair? I hate that. Call me something else.”
“Finch.”
“Finch?”
“It suits you.”
“All right, I’m Finch. You can be Sparrow.”
She shook her head. “Something else. Not Sparrow.” The name gave her an uneasy feeling, as though she were usurping someone else’s identity.
“Wren.”
“Wren it is. Time’s passing, Finch. We should be about our quest.” It was true, the sun was well past its zenith and they only had the day to complete their task. The two women set off down the road, Finch on the grass verge and Wren crunching her way on the gravel. It wasn’t long before a problem arose. The wood began to thin out. It was apparent that in a little while it would be gone, and the surrounding landscape would be stony.
“Do you think we could go back and fetch my boots?” Finch asked. “It can’t be that far.”
“I’m not sure that you can go back,” Wren replied. “Once something has passed out of sight it’s gone forever.”
Finch looked at the road ahead. “Well, walking on this stuff for hours is going to cripple me.”
The gravel was, it had to be admitted, unhelpfully sharp, and by the look of the road ahead even that would be preferable to the roadside.
“I have an idea,” Wren said. “Can I have the knife back?”
Finch handed her the knife, a little reluctantly, it seemed to Wren. She took the blade and stepped off the road looking at the trees.
“What are you doing?” Finch asked.
“Just wait a minute. You’ll see.” She found what she was looking for. The tree looked familiar, but she had no idea what it was called or where she might have seen it before. She used the knife to cut away two slabs of the thick bark, each about a foot long and half a foot wide. She brought these back to the road where she sat down and shaped them a little, trimming the ends so that they were more rounded.
“Put your feet on these,” she said.
“You’re making shoes?”
“Feet.”
Finch obeyed. Standing squarely on the bark slabs. Wren used the knife to mark between her toes and either side of her heel. She used the knife again to drill small holes where she’d marked it. Next she pulled out the tails of her shirt and cut off a handful of strips. She tied and twisted these into short ropes which she passed through the holes she’d made, tying them beneath so that they wouldn’t come free.
“Stand on them again,” she said. Finch did as she was told, and Wren twisted the ropes about each other and tied them to Finch’s ankles. “Try them,” she said.
Finch walked up and down on the gravel. “A bit loose,” she said. “The left one especially.”
Wren put a stick through the knots behind the heel and turned it once, tucking the ends away where they didn’t touch Finch’s skin.
“How’s that?”
“Amazing,” Finch said. “Not as good as boots, but it’ll do for the road. Where did you learn that?”
Wren shrugged. “I have no idea.”
They walked on together, and as expected the terrain became rougher. The trees thinned and vanished and they found themselves winding up a stony windswept hill towards a low peak. Gorse bushes crowded out the yellowish grass.
The hill, it turned out was a false summit. Behind it lay another and they crested several more before they saw what must surely be their final goal – a building that stood black against the evening sky.
“I hope that’s it,” Finch said. “We’re running out of time.”
It was true. The sky above them was gathering a pink hue to the east, and the sun was only its own width above the horizon.
As they approached it became apparent that the building was no more than a wall and that there was a great door in the centre of it.
Wren tried the door, but it stayed firmly shut. There was no handle to turn. She walked around to the other side and saw that the door only existed in the front.
“There must be a lever somewhere,” Wren said. “Or a rope, or a plate to stand on.”
They searched the wall, and it was Wren that found it, a lever placed on the end of the wall, half built into the brick. She pulled it at once, and it came out smoothly enough, but nothing happened.
The sun had dipped another degree. Now it was skimming the tops of distant hills.
“There’s a lever on this end,” she called out. “See if there’s one on the other.”
“I see it,” Finch called back. “Shall I pull it?”
“Aye, pull it now.”
Finch must have pulled, because the lever at Wren’s end suddenly jumped up again. She seized it and forced it down once more.
There was a crack, a shout of noise like a tree snapping in a high wind and Wren saw the door swing open. She ran forwards, arriving at the same time as Finch before the open portal.
She could see nothing. It was like looking down into black ink. All that lay beyond the door was darkness.
“Well, I suppose we should go through,” Wren said. It didn’t look very inviting, she had to admit.
“No.”
“No?”
“You go,” Finch was smiling, and even as she spoke she began to fade. “You’ve passed the test, Callista,” she said. “Enjoy your prize. I was never really here.”
And she was alone, and she was Callista again, her memory flooding back as she stood before the consuming darkness of the door. Just two steps more and she would be through, but she paused for a moment and looked back at the landscape that was beginning to unravel as the sun left it. The dream was dying.
She felt sad. She’d liked Finch, and even though the woman wasn’t real she felt as though she had lost a friend.
Just two more steps and she would be a god mage.
Callista hesitated again, but there was no choice. It was either oblivion and joining Rodric’s sister in the burning ground or the great prize. She shrugged. She took two steps forwards.
45 The Road to Bas Erinor
The King’s company travelled two days without incident. It was pleasant enough, riding through the occasional forests of southern Avilian, but all the time Narak expected some resistance to their progress, and so when it came on the third day he was not surprised. Indeed he felt relieved. He was not accustomed to waiting for others to throw the dice.
They were riding through broken woodland. The day was fine, the sun already high, and the men were easing back in expectation of their midday meal. One of Degoran’s scouts rode back from the van. The fact that he rode straight back to the king was a bad sign.
“There are men ahead, lord king,” the scout said.
“Men?”
“Soldiers. We could not count them, but I dare to say that they are superior in number, lord king.”
“How far ahead?”
“A mile – probably less.”
“And could you see their colours?” Degoran asked. To Narak his tone seemed mild for a king who was about to be braced in his own kingdom.
“Your own, lord king,” the scout replied. “They wear the colours of the Seventh Friend.”
Narak’s heart sank. The duke had sent the city volunteers against their king. If Cain had been here he could have turned them with a word. General Cain Arbak was still a legend in the regiment, but these were not the men of the second great war, not the heroes of Fal Verdan.
“Shall we speak to them?” he asked the king.
Degoran looked at him and smiled. “With you by my side it would be unconscionable to be timid,” he replied.
They rode forwards, riding past the ranks of the king’s regiment that lay ahead, and one officer, Narak assumed that he was the colonel, rode after them.
“Lo
rd King,” the man cried. “Will you not take a guard with you?”
“I have what I need,” Degoran said, and in spite of that a detachment of the king’s regiment followed them, hastily assembling into a well ordered rearguard.
Narak was not entirely sure that the king’s decision to face these men was a wise one, but he understood it.
They trotted up the road until the trees thinned and they found themselves in a meadow. Narak was an old hand at estimating numbers in the field, and he reckoned there were well over a thousand men drawn up here blocking the king’s road.
It would have been possible to go around them, but he did not doubt that there would be scouts in the surrounding woodland, and to the west there was a substantial river with the only crossing point twenty miles behind them. It was a good position, suggesting that this small army was commanded by a competent colonel.
Narak and the king rode boldly to the centre of the line that faced them.
“Who commands here?” he demanded.
One horse pushed forwards, and Narak studied its rider. He was an older man, grey hair showing under his cap and clear grey eyes. He returned Narak’s examination.
“This is my regiment,” he said.
“And who are you?”
“I am the Marquis of Dunsandel,” the man replied. “And you?”
Narak knew the name. Dunsandel had been one of the families to benefit from the fall of Bel Arac and others in the last Great War. He ignored the question.
“Your purpose here?”
“I hold the road and have orders that none shall pass.”
Narak glanced across at Degoran, who was looking remarkably composed. “This man is your king,” he said. “Who orders you to bar the king’s road to the king of Avilian?”
Dunsandel bowed from the saddle. “Lord King,” he said. “I apologise, but the king has no business or right in Bas Erinor.”
“By whose order?”
“The Duke of Bas Erinor.”