by Guy Antibes
~~~
Chapter Twelve
~
The three Toryan-made flyers flew over the vast forest that covered the foothills and the mountains on the western side of Santasia. As Trak looked down, he noticed scattered villages and towns carved into the never-ending canopy.
“Those are Toryans?” he asked Tembul, who manipulated the wind.
“They are.”
“But there aren’t many fields. How do you provide for your people?”
Tembul lowered his hands and the flyer stopped moving. “I can’t talk and keep this pose, Trak. Most towns are connected to hidden valleys further up the mountains. Our people don’t rely on grain for sustenance as much as others do. We haven’t gone past any since they are further west. Scouts like myself ensure that they are kept alone.”
“I don’t remember seeing any of these on my way here.” Trak scratched his head.
“You traveled a bit further east,” Tembul smiled. “See how the land dips down. There is a massive shelf that runs along the entire mountain range. We mostly live up on the shelf and you traveled below it.”
Trak looked out and noticed the abrupt change in the height of the tops of the trees. He hadn’t been paying as much attention to the topography as he should have. Trak could imagine Misson would scold him for missing such an observable feature in the land.
“When we traveled on foot to Kizru we were below the shelf?”
Tembul nodded. “Perhaps you need to spend a bit more time observing your surroundings, young man. Your education has not finished.”
After looking out at the countryside, Trak shook his head. “It hasn’t, has it?”
“I must catch up with the others,” Tembul said as he assumed the wind pose. “Hang on to your support.”
Once they had caught up to the other two flyers, Tembul had Trak motion them to descend down to the central square of a village.
The flyers attracted a crowd. Trak could only hear comments babbled in the Toryan language. If he spent any more time in the country, he’d have to learn at least a few words.
Tembul and Lenis walked up to a group of gawkers and began to speak.
“They are introducing us as foreign magicians fighting for Torya,” Neel said speaking in Trak’s ear. “I’m beginning to remember a bit more of the language I grew up with. Don’t tell anyone, eh?” He winked and walked back over to Able.
Trak turned to look at their group. Neel, Honor and Rasia fit in where Trak and Able stuck out with their lighter complexions and lighter hair. He wondered if any of the villagers had seen anyone with light hair before. Like all of the inhabitants of the Cokasan continent, the Toryans in front of them had darker hair and skin.
Lenis turned and glared at him and then turned back, making Trak feel isolated. The Toryan was only a few years older, but without a command of the Toryan language, Trak felt helpless and more like a child than a man.
He missed Pestle for the first time in quite a while. He missed working at The Blunted Sword, keeping Able’s little farm up and working with horses. What had he become? Sometimes he felt just as grown up as the rest of those with him, but right now, with Tembul and Lenis speaking an unknown language, he felt younger than his near-eighteen years.
Tembul turned to Trak. “There are Kandannans already leaking across the southern pass that the Santasians call Dianza. I think we need to head west and see if we can help them. What do you think?”
Tembul looked directly at him. What did he think? Trak noticed that the others focused on him. He underwent a sudden loss of confidence and looked around. “I don’t care. We will have to come back this way, in any event. Perhaps prevention is better than letting them come further?” Trak posed it as a question rather than a decision.
Ben walked up and put his hand on Trak’s shoulder. “That’s a good way of putting it. See the Kandannans as a disease to treat early so it doesn’t fester.”
Neel nodded and the rest followed. Trak’s question ended up being a decision. Luck.
“We have an army unit of five hundred men and women stationed just below the pass. If we rest up tonight, we can arrive before the day ends tomorrow,” Tembul said.
“I don’t care where we go, Tembul,” Lenis said, pointedly ignoring the rest of the group. “We will leave early.” Tembul translated. Lenis said it as if he were in charge. Trak just assumed they’d be leaving early in any case.
“There is a visitor’s house in this village that will shelter us all. I suggest that we move the flyers out of the common area,” Tembul said.
Trak was thankful for Tembul’s words breaking the awkward silence that ensued after Lenis’s command.
Unlike in Kizru, where they slept on beds similar to everyone else, the Toryans in the village seemed to sleep on the floor with a soft woven mat beneath them. It took an hour or more for Trak to get used to the arrangement, but he finally slipped into a fitful slumber and felt relieved when Honor shook him awake in the early dawn.
Provisions had already been piled by their flyers along with a number of leather tubes for messages. Few Toryans were about, but a better-dressed Toryan conferred quietly with Tembul, who clapped the man on his shoulder and walked towards their growing group.
“They were going to send a messenger into the mountains this morning. These dispatches came from Kizru last night. They left the capital a week before we did.” Tembul looked at the pile. “Delivering these will help explain our unexpected appearance.”
The others finally arrived, and after downing hot soup to ward off the morning chill, all three flyers were soon high above the treetops flying in a line, led by Tembul and Trak. All of the magicians switched their duties. Trak delivered the wind, following Tembul’s navigational instructions.
Trak slowly turned his head, hoping he wouldn’t break the wind spell’s effects. “We’ll spend all day heading in the same direction?”
Tembul nodded. “We’ll switch off at midday after a rest stop. I know just the place.”
The sun had already passed the top of its daily arc when Tembul directed Trak to land in a valley. The place looked like a jumble of vine-covered rocks. When they landed, he could see that they stopped in the midst of a vast array of ruins. Blocks of stone lay in all kinds of positions, small and large. Trak could sense antiquity here.
A stream ran among the blocks, cutting a pace-high bank through the soil that covered the ruins.
“We can stop here for an hour or so,” Tembul said in Santasian. “Do you know of this place, Lenis?”
“Rezuri?”
Tembul nodded. “The ancient capital of Torya, destroyed by the hordes from Vashta fifteen hundred years ago. Their magicians knew no respect for our history and spent two years laying waste to our capital. Hundreds of thousands of Toryans lived in this valley, the center of our culture. Most of them died here. Once that happened, we disbanded into the forest and revenged our dead brothers and sisters, bit-by-bit, year by year. Now, few brave our forests and fewer leave Torya.”
Lenis glared at Trak and then at Able and the rest. “Outsiders are not welcome,” he said in badly accented Santasian.
“Most outsiders,” corrected Tembul. “These few have the protection of the king, Lenis. Do not forget that. Nellus and Trak both have Toryan blood flowing through their veins, despite their appearance.”
“Half-breeds.”
Trak had had enough of Lenis’s angry stare. “Quarter breed, here, I’m afraid. It has only made me stronger.”
Tembul laughed. “He tells the truth. You’ve tried him once and failed. It will only happen again and again.”
Those were words Lenis obviously didn’t want to hear. He grabbed the food that Able had been getting out of his flyer and stalked out of sight.
“Full breeds,’ Neel said. “He makes me wonder how you could ever stop the Vashtans from invading the forests.”
“That’s what we get for creating Kizru. If I were king, and I’m not, I would make a stronger Torya,
like it is everywhere else.” Tembul looked in the direction that Lenis had gone. “For some, civilization burns out a properly humble attitude, but for others, living among many cultures brings a better life to all.”
“I’d agree with that if everyone pursued peace, but that isn’t the case right now,” Neel said. “Why did we stop here? To see a grand failure of the past?”
Tembul shook his head. “Eat your fill and I will show you.”
Trak couldn’t help but bolt his midday meal down, but as fast as he ate, the others took more time and he had to wait. He rose from the ground and paced around the clearing. It might have been a city square, long ago. Pulling his sword out, he scraped away some of the vines on a block that was as tall as he. Dirt filled the carved decorations. He noticed that the edges of the block were rounded and shaped. The edge reminded him of some of the Kizru buildings. He tried to imagine a city much larger than Kizru filled with that distinctive architecture, but his imagination couldn’t support his desire.
“Come,” Tembul said, getting up from sitting on the ground. “Let’s put what’s left away, so when we return we can leave immediately. We still should reach our forces before nightfall.”
They followed Tembul, who seemed to know his way around the ruins. He led them to a huge pile of stones. Around the other side, he slipped into an opening. Cracked stairs led them down from the surface. Holes in the rocks above illuminated their journey. The vines began to thin and the passage opened up to reveal a stone floor. Toryans, not too long ago, had cleared the floor to reveal a vast mosaic.
Trak could see the outlines of the coast of Santasia as he had seen drawn on a map.
“Here is the best representation of Torya, the continent that you call Cokasan.” Tembul crouched down and traced part of the coastline. “Our people covered the entire continent. We even had desert people living in the vast deserts of western Kandanna. No more. This map is as good as any I have seen and is the equal, even today, of any copies we have in Kizru.”
He pointed to a spot. “We are here.”
The appearance of a network of ancient roads surprised Trak. He didn’t think the Santasians used the same routes. “Where did the roads go?”
“My ancestors, who fled from Vashtan, ripped them up and used them to build,” Ben said. “I suppose they never took this ruin because of its remote location. There are quarries all over the continent that would be easier to mine than transporting these blocks through the mountains.”
“We can’t move them even now,” Lenis said, suddenly appearing on the steps leading down to the map room.
Tembul shook his head. “These stones weigh tons. Our flyers weigh no more than any of us. No one has the power to lift them. We’ve all tried at one time or another.” Tembul laughed at the memory. “Well, now you’ve seen something most Toryans never have. Who knows what other wonders lay underneath the ruins. This was rediscovered by scouts a hundred years ago and when we come this way, we’ve always done a bit more cleaning when we visit.” He gave them a wistful smile and raised his eyebrows. “But not today. It’s time to go.”
They all left the map chamber. Trak drifted behind them and wondered how much power he had. He stood on a stone block about the size of the flyer but nearly as tall as himself. He climbed on top and made the lift pose and invoked the power word to raise the block one story.
The block shifted and trembled and suddenly broke free of its union with the earth and rose up three paces or so. Trak immediately assumed a wind pose to transport the block to the square where their flyers lay. He thought of Tembul’s words about humility and felt ashamed by his impulse to show the others. He lowered the stone and ran forward to catch up.
He found Neel just ahead.
“I thought you’d try something like that. You are not one to miss out on a challenge, are you? My son continues to impress me.” He ruffled Trak’s hair, but didn’t say a word about observing Trak move the stone to any of the others.
~
Trak lay in a tent, looking at the pattern of branches sway with the wind as the moon cast shadows on the fabric roof. Tembul had to plead with the commander of the forces to let them join them. In the end, Trak and he rose high into the air and dropped stones to the earth to show that they could do more than fly around like birds.
Tomorrow, the three of them would fly up to the pass and over into Kandanna to see what forces were arrayed against them. Trak and Tembul would take an officer to scout out places where they could stop up the pass with blasts of magic. If they did that, rubble would fill the pass. Perhaps they could do enough to stop the Kandannans while the Loyalists re-captured Espozia.
Trak thought of the block that he had moved. If he could direct large enough boulders into the pass, the Kandannans would have a hard time clearing it away. He didn’t know of a spell that he could use to move the rock without him standing on it mimicking a lift. He’d the rest of the night to think about any alternatives. Sleep took him before he came to any other solutions.
He still hadn’t solved the problem and became frustrated while he stood in a long line for breakfast along with the Toryan soldiers. Officers mixed in with the regular fighters. Able joined him while they shuffled towards the folding tables that held bread, porridge and some hot drink that steamed from cauldrons by the side of the tables.
“How are you holding up, Trak? We haven’t had much time to talk, just the two of us,” Able said with a smile.
“I’ve learned a lot about myself, Father.” Trak picked up a metal plate and cup. The Toryans made things differently than other cultures. He liked the rolled edges and the shape of the curving open-ended handle of the cup. “I have a lot of abilities and have enough presence of mind to use them, but in other ways, I’m still not a full adult.”
“It’s plain you’ve got some filling out to do,” Able said as he slopped some porridge in his bowl.
Trak laughed. “That’s not what I mean. I need more life experiences, I think. Everything has been too easy for me.”
Able raised his eyebrows. “That is an astute observation, my lad. There will be plenty of life experiences, fighting in this war. More than I’d like, I’m afraid,” he said. “Life in Greenbrook wasn’t easy, but there weren’t the challenges you’ve faced already with the Magicians Guild and the Colcannons wanting your neck.”
“I wonder if the Toryans are the next to toss me out.”
That brought a chuckle from Able. “We are all as good as tossed. I talked to Neel when we were back in Kizru.” He pressed his lips together and dipped his cup in the hot cauldron, drawing up a hot spiced fruit drink. He took a sip. “Like fresh pressed cider, but I’m not familiar with the fruit.”
Trak tasted out of his own cup. “Peaches?” He shook his head. “Probably a mix of things. No alcohol, though.”
Able smiled. “Maybe they save this up for winter. Their ale is like the bilge water I smelled on the voyage over from Pestle. Let’s find a more secluded spot, so we can speak more easily.” He led Trak to the edge of the forest, and then in until he found a fallen log large enough for them to sit on.
“You were saying about talking to Neel in Kizru.”
Able bit into the small roll of bread and sipped some more of his hot drink. “I did,” he said after he swallowed. “He told me not to believe in any of the Toryans’ promises. They are honest enough amongst themselves like any other people, but they don’t treat outsiders with the same honesty. We are beneath them. That’s why he thinks they’ve never integrated with the Santasians or the Colcanans.”
“Tembul is different.”
That brought a dubious look to Able’s face. “What makes you think that? As soon as he could he put you under with a pose, he did.”
“What about showing us the ruins? You can tell hardly anyone goes there.”
“I’ll admit that’s a point in your favor, Trak. I’m not saying they’ll stick a knife in your back, but you have to be on your guard. We all do.”
Trak nodded. Ever since he had left Pestledown, when had he ever not been on his guard? He put his arm around his stepfather. “Thanks. I have missed being with you. I hope I haven’t caused you too much distress.”
“Just not knowing how you are doing. I suppose any parent, or uncle, feels the same way once their kids have left home. Neel’s been more anxious than I have, though. He used to walk around the inn like a caged mountain lion worrying about you.”
“Did someone mention my name?” Neel said, approaching them from the direction of the camp.
“Able said you were anxious about me.”
Neel sat next to Able on the other side of the log and took a few spoonfuls of porridge and washed them down with a sip of the hot fruit drink. He nodded. “When have I not been anxious about you? Once Galinda’s brother put the finger on you, just a few months before you received your inheritance, I’ve been in a perpetual state of anxiety. You don’t know how much work I had to do in the shadows to make things happen right for you. Working with Snively to get the inheritance structured properly, contacting Coffin Cricket and the rest. Not everything has been happenstance, although enough of it worked out that way.”
“Did you hire Honor Fidelia?”
Neel shook his head. “She recruited magicians for the Santasian Magicians Guild while she lived in Pestledown. She made sure that most of her recruits went to Mozira, not Espozia. Honor looked at her work as saving lives, even though they would be absorbed into the Magicians Guild. Her presence in Pestledown…” Neel took another swig of his drink. “That was providence. I’m just glad she took an extra special liking to you, or you would be fighting Riotro along with the rest of the Moziran magicians. Hell, we’ve all taken a liking to you, Trak.”
“I’ve taken quite a liking to her, but especially to my two fathers,” Trak said, his voice a bit unsteady. “Just be patient with me. I’m still a teenager and at some point…”