All signs of the prickly plants that had dominated the landscape of the lost for many miles were gone. In fact, Aram had the distinct impression that the lost was behind them, and that they had moved beyond the eastern border of that troubled region. The road curved away from the ocean, which had disappeared into the south behind the outlines of the hills, and the pavement held to a more easterly tangent as it wound up through higher country.
Here and there among the hills, small, clear streams ran down through rocky ravines. Then, as they climbed up and over the crest of the hills, and the sight of the ocean, though very far away now, once again dominated the whole of the southern horizon, they saw before them a view of distant, lower country, and the feet of the mountains on the borders of Seneca, set among the dark green of thick forests.
The road came out onto the relatively flat top of a high plateau of sorts, rough and a bit uneven, that sported thick groves of a wide variety of trees. To Aram’s eyes, as the road straightened out and ran almost on the level across this plateau, there seemed to be something unusual about the lay the ground that stretched immediately ahead of them.
Just as he held up his hand in an instinctive move to slow the column, the trees thinned and a chasm yawned abruptly, deep and wide. From somewhere far below arose a dull roaring sound, echoing out of the unseen depths. To their front, the road ran on, over a bridge that extended straight and level across the chasm. At first glance, the structure of the bridge, at least that part of it which could be seen, appeared to be sound, but Aram halted so that he could examine these marvels, both the deep canyon and the ancient bridge, and to discern what both of these things might mean for their forward progress.
Dismounting, he walked to his right off the road and made his way through the brush and rocks to the edge of the chasm. The wall of the canyon opposite him, perhaps a half-mile distant, was composed of sheer, bare rock, with only scattered tendrils of vines that clung here and there to the vertical surfaces. As the far wall of the canyon fell into the gloomy depths, it appeared to descend almost perfectly on the vertical.
He found a sturdy tree growing near the canyon’s edge. Taking hold of a stout limb, after checking it for soundness, he leaned out and looked downward. The roaring sound in the depths arose from the agitated movement of a mighty stream of water. Far below, there were the blue-green of deep pools, separated by stretches of white froth as the river descended from somewhere in the distant north down through this chasm on its way to the sea. Though its journey was nearly done, still it fell and tumbled downward, searching for the level of the ocean.
At once, Aram knew this stream of water for what it was, though he’d never seen it before, and he also knew from whence it arose. Glancing into the north, he saw, far away, the white tops of great mountains, and became certain of his judgment. This, then, was the mighty stream that drained out through the mountains on the southeastern quadrant of the high plains of the horses. It was the outflow from the great Inland Sea.
Looking outward and then downward again, he studied the construction of the bridge. It was founded upon a marvelously engineered and substantial arch whose feet were anchored far below, along the edges of the chasm wall, on either side of the river. Letting his gaze rove up the rising curve of the arch, he studied the design of the structure. The entire thing was composed wholly of worked stone, and curved gently upward until finding its keystone, which was enormous, and was inserted just a few yards below the roadway of the bridge. The roadway was supported every few feet by vertical struts that reached from it downward to the top of the arch, and were also made of stone. The structure that spanned the deep chasm was the result of an amazing feat of engineering. Once again, Aram felt diminished by the genius of his ancient ancestors.
Now, there was only to determine the soundness of the roadway that stretched across this magnificent piece of work. He went back to the road, and accompanied by Thaniel, Findaen, and Andaran, after instructing the others to wait, stepped out onto the span. There were, in fact, gaps here and there in the pavement, places where the stones had weathered away or fallen completely through, due the ravages of time and the absence of maintenance. But despite the pits in the stone and occasional gaps, some of which afforded glimpses of the churning river far below, the roadway seemed sound, and felt solid.
The company mounted up, and with Aram and Thaniel leading the way, moved out onto the bridge. About a hundred feet out, Aram looked back to check on Ka’en, and saw her sway unsteadily in the saddle. Her eyes were wide and seemed glazed, and her face had gone much whiter than usual. Quickly, he dismounted and went back to her. She looked down at him, blinking rapidly, and started to slip from the saddle.
He reached up a hand to steady her. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”
“I can see the river.” Her voice was small, breathless. With an effort, she focused on his face. “Down there. I-I don’t like heights,” she continued weakly. “They frighten me.”
“I didn’t know,” he answered. “I’m sorry. Just look at me – look only at me. I’ll walk beside you. Look only at my face, and you’ll be alright.”
“I apologize, Aram. I’m such a child.”
“No, you’re brave and strong. Stronger than me, sometimes.”
He leaned out and called ahead to Thaniel. “Lead us across. I’m going to walk beside Ka’en. Don’t try to cross any gaps that seem too large.”
“As you wish, Lord Aram.”
Once, just beyond the center of the span, Shingka, who had walked with Leorg and Durlrang nearby, put her paws up on the railing and peered over the edge. Ka’en saw this act, focused on it, and went whiter, slumping in the saddle. Aram strengthened his grip on her leg.
“Look at me, Ka’en. Look only at me,” he said sternly, and then turned to the wolves. “Shingka! Leorg! Get up ahead of Thaniel, and warn him of any bad places in the pavement.”
Chastened by his tone, but ignorant of their offense, the wolves complied. Aram heard the low rumble of Durlrang’s laughter but paid no attention.
After crossing the bridge, and moving out of sight of the chasm, Aram insisted that they stop and start a fire, and that Findaen make kolfa. Everyone in the party knew why this was done, but no one broached the subject. Finding that Ka’en was hungry, Aram decided that they would eat as well. Only after he was sure that she had recovered sufficiently to travel would they go on until nightfall.
That afternoon, after they had moved away from the bridge and on across the plateau, they ascended up through a line of low, heavily timbered hills. Beyond these hills, the road began to descend again, though gradually, for on the eastern side of the high plateau the country fell more gently and unevenly, rising again in places as it trended eastward toward the southern edge of the mountain range. These mountains now towered above them on their left, and rose to even greater heights as the range ran into the north. Once, they startled a company of quail from a thicket near the road, and they often saw rabbits ahead of them, near the verge or even on the pavement, that scurried quickly into the brush.
“We’ll all eat well this night, my lord,” Durlrang said with an eager growl.
Aram laughed. “Worry about yourself first, my friend – then the rest of us if there is plenty.”
“There will be plenty,” the wolf replied.
They camped that night in a grove of the exotic, high-crowned evergreens that filled a hollow below the road, from which a spring bubbled up and ran down through a narrow hollow. Durlrang had spoken truly. The wolves, after killing and eating their fill, brought several rabbits and five quail to the fire before sundown. Mallet, who had suffered on their skimpy daily rations, went after this surplus hungrily.
Wamlak grinned and then set his features in lines of seriousness. “Your father, Mallet,” he said evenly, “was half lasher, wasn’t he?”
But the big man was too full of good food, with more yet to be consumed, to be annoyed by Wamlak’s needling. “Probably,” he answered simply, and
he reached out for yet another roasted rabbit.
The air that night, if not exactly sultry, was nonetheless warm, a bit humid, and pleasant, and Ka’en slept well and deeply, allowing Aram to get up before dawn and find Thaniel near the road above the camp. Together, they watched the sky lighten in the east.
“This is a very pleasant land, but I’ve seen no evidence of people,” Aram said.
“I thought of that myself, yesterday,” the horse answered. “It is too green, too full of life, to be empty of humans.”
“Will we find it completely empty?” Aram wondered.
“We are here,” Thaniel answered. “We can only look.”
Aram nodded, but gave no answer as the sky brightened further, and the flanks of the mountains on their left turned from black to green with the coming of morning.
That day, the road curved slightly again, turning toward the southeast, and the forested slopes of the mountains came up opposite and began to slide behind them. At midday, they were still in higher country than that which Aram was sure must lie to their front, but the road descended more often than it climbed upward, and the rate of incline or decline was gentler, either way. Then, as the sun angled down the sky into the west, and the mountains fell completely behind, so that they could fully view their thickly forested eastern flanks, they came to where the land fell abruptly away and the road curved sharply into the north as it navigated a rapid loss in altitude.
Below them stretched a vast green land, forested for the most part, but with wide, uneven swaths of open meadow. To the right was the broad deep blue-green of the southern ocean, rolling away to a very distant, darkly hazy horizon. And a few miles from the base of the wooded slope that fell away before them, clustered along the pleasant curve of a wide bay, there rose the multi-colored spires of a large city, rose and gold and white in the angled sunlight. Curving out from the western edge of the city, and arching into the waters of the ocean itself there was a barrier that held back the swelling sea, granting the city a harbor of calm. This barrier curved back inward toward the shore on the east, near where the forest reasserted itself against the structures of man, and was as impressive in size and scope as the city it protected. Aram brought the column to a halt, and they crowded the roadside, gazing down in wonder. Ka’en drew in a sharp breath.
“Beautiful,” she said.
41
“It seems that we have found Seneca,” Edwar stated, unnecessarily.
Aram nodded, but did not answer any of the excited exclamations from his companions. Though he couldn’t make it out, something about the magnificent city, even at this distance, seemed wrong to him.
Then Wamlak said, “Is it my eyes, or does the forest invade where it should not?”
And then Aram understood what was wrong with the view. Far to the east, on the borders of Elam, there was a city named Panax which though abandoned for thousands of years, had somehow managed down through the centuries to keep the forest at bay. Not so, here. The city gathered along the curving sweep of the bay had succumbed. Everywhere, along its edges, and deep into its many neighborhoods, the green of untended trees, obviously not planted by human hands, grew in wild profusion.
Disappointment, keen and sharp, descended into Aram’s heart. By this initial evidence, it appeared that Seneca’s might had been truly broken, its people, perhaps, eradicated. They had made the treacherous and difficult journey for naught. But then, as he sat on Thaniel’s back, and felt despair begin to seep inward, he thought of the smoke from scattered fires that he had seen arising from the woodlands when he had stood upon the lip of the crater that surrounded Kelven’s mountain and had gazed southward, upon the northern reaches of this very country.
There had been many of those tendrils of smoke. And the privateers had told tales in Lamont of tribes that lived among the eastern forests. Lifting his eyes, Aram looked toward the east. The vast forests of Seneca stretched to a distant, unresolved horizon. Surely, in a land as broad and green as this, there were people that had survived, and eventually, thrived again. Perhaps, down the intervening centuries, they had simply not yet spread far enough into the west to reclaim the city below.
He turned and looked into the north. From the sea, the rolling hills and hollows of Seneca rose very gradually into the north and east. Bounded by the high mountains on the west, the land rolled gently eastward seeming without end, though far away to the northeast, there was higher ground – not mountains exactly, but at least higher hills, covered with the rumpled green of forest. There were no rising columns of smoke, but it was still early evening, and the air was warm and thick. Also, though far away to the north, near the feet of Kelven’s mountain, there would be snow upon the ground beneath bare-limbed deciduous trees, here, in the south of Seneca, winter evidently never came. Except for cooking, perhaps, there would be no reason for fire.
That thought brought with it another, less consoling. Maybe, if a remnant of Seneca had somehow survived Manon’s treachery, they had abandoned the gentle south and its city, and lived now only among the wild reaches of the north and east, where memory of slaughter might, perhaps, be more easily forgotten. Would they then have to journey hundreds of miles further, up the long, winding river valleys, into the wilderness of forest? Even as he pondered this question, Aram knew the answer.
There was no time. In two weeks, certainly less than three, they must start back west. If spring came, and the enemy moved upon Derosa, Duridia, and Stell in his absence, there would be little reason to return at all. No, they would go down and look, maybe travel north and east some way, and then turn around, whatever they found, and go home.
To Aram’s left, Ruben suddenly stood in the stirrups and peered eastward.
“I see another,” he said.
“Another city?” Aram asked.
“Yes, my lord.” Ruben pointed further east along the sweep of the ocean. “By the sea, near that clump of hills. And there’s something else, even further to the east, rising above the forest. Do you see them? They’re amazing!”
Aram gazed along the indicated tangent, and found the rounded hills, just beyond another inward curving line of the shore. More towers, more scattered ramparts of colored stone jutted above the trees. This cluster of buildings, a bit less in number than those nearer, were too far away to tell whether or not they had also been overtaken by the unimpeded growth of forest, but at least it gave Aram another reason to descend into Seneca, and pursue the possibility of finding inhabitants.
Looking further, he saw that which had brought an exclamation of wonder from Ruben. Rising above the forest, perhaps twenty or thirty miles distant, were two white spires or columns, jutting above the trees to an astonishing height.
“What are they?”
“Guard towers?” Ruben suggested.
Aram frowned. “Then why aren’t they here, near the border?”
He looked around, and then gazed down the curve of the road where it descended to the left. Somewhere down there, it must swing back, for he could see the indication of its straight path leading into the land below them and to the right. The hillside below was steep, and off to the right, he heard the sound of tumbling water. He glanced back at the sun, still an hour or so in the sky.
“We can’t make it down onto the plain, I fear, before dark,” he said. “I think we should camp here.”
They feasted again that night, thanks to the efforts of the wolves, and there was plenty of fresh, clear water. Despite the evident abandonment of the city below, Aram gradually grew more positive in his thoughts, for humans were the only creatures that used fire, and he had seen many tendrils of smoke rising above the trees on that long ago winter. People lived in this land surely, and maybe they were little more than savages, immigrants from Farlong, perhaps. But there was also a chance that they were of the lost tribes of Seneca – and that some of them yet dwelled by the sea. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, they would know.
Morning dawned warm, with mounded columns of puffy c
louds piled high above the ocean off to the south. As Aram sipped his cup of kolfa and watched the sun climb up and over the rumpled horizon, Wamlak, who stood nearby, stiffened and pointed.
“A ship!”
Instinctively, Aram looked down at the distant, fine stretch of beach lining the shore, barely visible in the morning light. But Wamlak was pointing further out, onto the broad expanse of the ocean. Aram lifted his gaze and swept his eyes back and forth. And then he saw it. Out on the surface of the deeply blue waters, perhaps two miles offshore, there was a tiny gray speck.
“Does it move, and does it go east or west?” Aram asked this question excitedly, not knowing what the answer would import, or even if it mattered.
Wamlak was silent a moment, and then Ruben, who had come up beside them, said, “It goes east.”
“It does,” Wamlak agreed.
Aram felt a thrill. “Then there must be a reason, a destination in the mind of its master.”
Wamlak nodded. “But does it go to this land or someplace further. What lies to the east of Seneca, my lord, if anything?”
“Farlong is to the east of Seneca,” answered Aram, “but the border is two or three hundred miles away or more. Beyond that – I don’t know.”
“Are there great cities in Farlong?”
Aram remembered looking down from the flying disc of the Astra upon a dry, barren, and broken country to the east of Kelven’s Mountain, and wondering if anyone at all lived in that land. “I think not.”
Wamlak shrugged. “Then it is a ship of Seneca, or it comes into Seneca for a purpose. The city below us may indeed be empty – I cannot tell at this distance – but maybe the next contains people, or the next beyond that?”
As he mentally acknowledged this possibility, Aram felt his excitement rising. Maybe, after all, the people that had stood dependably at Joktan’s side so long ago had managed to leave their seed upon the earth. He turned and looked toward the camp. Everyone, including Ka’en, had risen, and breakfast was being prepared. “Let’s eat quickly, and go down.”
Kelven's Riddle Book Three Page 43