—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Because of its name, Arion expected the frontier of Avrlyn to be green, but for the last several days all she’d seen was brown. Brown rocks, brown grass, brown mud; even the trees were dingy. She’d also been disappointed by the lack of fields. Arion had seen paintings of open valleys—large expanses of flat land or rolling hills—that granted visions of massive skies and wondrous sunsets. Instead, since crossing the Nidwalden, she had walked through an endless tunnel of forests, and the vast woodlands known as the Harwood weren’t anything like the ancient groves of Erivan. They didn’t invite guests to wander in dappled shade. Instead, dense thickets shunned the light and barred passage with thorny brambles. Forests here were wild, hostile things, and she imagined secrets cloaked in moss, leaf, and needle.
She followed Thym, who rode on a cream-colored horse. Gryndal had offered to supply her with a guide, but she had declined. It wasn’t due to any concern about him harming or spying on her. She simply didn’t want to spend several days of isolation with one of Gryndal’s toadies. Still, she recognized the need for a guide.
To her surprise, Arion learned that no living Miralyith, aside from the fane, had set foot outside of Erivan. That forced her to pick a guide from one of the other tribes, which widened the choices, but not by much. Few Fhrey besides the Instarya had ever crossed the Nidwalden River, and none of them could be found in Estramnadon. Eventually, she narrowed the choices to six. They included an Eilywin architect who had once been employed by the Instarya to do some repair work on the northernmost fortress of Ervanon after it had suffered an attack from a band of giants. She’d asked three times about the giant attack to be certain she’d heard correctly. She had. There was also a trio of Nilyndd builders, the same ones the Eilywin had brought with her to do the actual repairs. Another possibility was an Asendwayr hunter, who had served for several hundred years at each of the four Avrlyn frontier outposts, but he was ill when Arion visited. And then there was Thym, an Umalyn who was charged by the tribe of Ferrol’s faithful to spend the warm months ministering to the outer reaches.
Arion chose Thym because she felt comfortable with one of Ferrol’s faithful, having grown up among that tribe. After two thousand years, Arion recognized almost everyone living in Estramnadon, and Thym was no different. Still, he had been just a face and a name. And although she’d probably met him before, she couldn’t recall any conversations. Thym was in the process of preparing for his yearly trip west when she explained about the fane sending her to Alon Rhist, and she asked if he would act as her escort to the frontier. He replied with a stiff smile and a dutiful nod, then introduced her to the horse she would ride.
Arion had never ridden a horse; few sane Fhrey had. The skittish animals were known to bolt or throw their riders. Ferrol had blessed the Fhrey with three thousand years of life, and given that falls often resulted in permanent injury or death, the idea of getting on the back of even the most docile animal was reason for concern.
“Can’t we walk?” she had asked when meeting the horse for the first time.
“It’s nearly a hundred miles over rough terrain to Alon Rhist,” Thym replied. “And forgive me, Your Eminence, but you don’t look like you do much hiking.”
She conceded, accepting the logic that there was little point in obtaining a Green Field Guide’s services if she didn’t take his advice. And that’s how Arion came to be precariously perched on the back of an extremely tall white horse named Naraspur when she and her guide reached the edge of the Harwood. The long tunnel of trees ended, and Arion beheld a wondrous sight. Leaving the forest, she discovered they were at a great height, on a ridge that afforded a breathtaking view. Having lived her entire life under Erivan’s canopy, Arion was amazed.
So this is the sky!
The entirety of it was so broad and deep, it appeared endless. There were inexplicable white wisps floating above them, and a brilliant light. Previously, she’d experienced the sun only filtered through layers of leaves and needles. Looking straight out, Arion saw her first horizon. She could see for forever. Hills rose and fell in blue ridges. Even more impressive was the monstrous mountain that towered over them. Cone-shaped, it appeared to challenge the vast blue of the sky for dominance, its peak a brilliant white. From it flowed a river, which snaked below them, glistening silver. But not even the mountain could rival the awe-inspiring sight of the sky.
Thym waited patiently, his horse’s tail swishing. The Umalyn were a patient lot, but he also must have known the effect of that bend in the road. She imagined that everyone he traveled with paused in that exact spot.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“From here on, you’ll need to travel with your hood up to guard against the sun. Cover your skin except during early morning or late afternoon. Otherwise you’ll burn.”
“Burn?”
Thym nodded. “If you limit your exposure, your skin will gradually darken. Then you won’t have to worry. A lot of sun too quickly will burn you.” He patted the top of his head with the flat of his palm. The priest had a full head of curly brown hair, so full and buoyant that he might have been wearing a furry hat. “My hair protects me, but you won’t fare so well, so do as I say and keep your hood up.” Thym urged his horse onward.
Arion did as he said, but sneaked tentative peeks skyward from under the lip of her garment. She wondered if Thym was lying to make a fool of her. That marvelous sense of freedom that had come with such a wide view was lost within the confines of the hood, but she followed Thym’s advice. Her guide hadn’t spoken much, and she didn’t think he’d break his silence if the danger wasn’t real.
“How far are we?”
“Still a few days out, but you’ll be able to see it once we reach the top of that next ridge.”
“Really?” she said skeptically. “I’ll be able to see the distance of more than one day’s ride?”
He laughed and caught himself with a hand over his mouth. “Forgive me, that wasn’t very respectful, Your Eminence.”
“I told you to call me Arion.”
“Of course, Your Eminence, but do understand that not all Miralyith are as nonchalant as you. Should I fall into the habit of familiarity, I might find it a habit hard to break. If I slipped up with someone else, someone less inclined to dispense with the honors of your tribe’s station…well…I don’t even want to consider what could happen.”
She sighed. “Fine. But I’m curious, why did you laugh?”
He looked down, embarrassed. “Please forgive me. That was rude.”
“But why did you do it?”
Thym’s eyes came up, and a bit of his smile lingered. He pointed to the rows of hills. “You already see more than a day’s ride. Those distant peaks are the Fendal and Adendal Durat, mountain ranges that cross the west side of Avrlyn and are easily a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty miles away.” He pointed at the mountain looming over them. “Just to reach the peak of Mount Mador would take you days.”
Arion gazed out amazed. “But it looks so close.”
“Distances are deceiving, especially when climbing is involved.”
The two followed a constricting path that twisted back on itself, descending the ridge into a shallow valley.
“And all of this is uninhabited?” she asked.
“Of course not.” Thym had moved ahead as the path narrowed, and she couldn’t see his face any longer. “These hills are filled with all manner of creatures.”
“Rhunes?”
“No.” Thym shook his head. “Down there, over that river is the High Spear Valley; that’s the farthest north we allow the Rhunes to travel. Most live in Rhulyn, that big area beyond. Over there”—he pointed to mountains in the far north—“are where the Grenmorians live, and there are all manner of goblins, of course. They live everywhere: hills, swamps, forests, even the sea. There are other things as well. These lands run deep, and no one has explored it all.”
“What about the Dherg?”
Thym
shook his hairy head. “The Dherg live underground in the far south. Extremely rare to see one of them.”
Arion peered southwest, where he had indicated Rhulyn was. “How many Rhunes are there?”
“No one knows. When they were nomadic, their numbers were small. Parents could only carry so many children, you see. Once they entered Rhulyn, they must have finally eluded the goblins that had been driving them, and they started settlements. They spread out in villages, and that’s when their population exploded. We deny them the land across the Bern River to keep them from encroaching farther into the west.”
“I heard a single mother can have fourteen offspring. Is that true?”
“I imagine more than that, but I’m no expert on the Rhunes. All I know is what I’ve gleaned from listening to the Instarya’s stories. They do have such wonderful tales. Life out here isn’t like life in Estramnadon.” He looked at the valley below. “This isn’t a tame world. The Instarya patrol it, watch the roads, and ferret out the threats. They live lives of high adventure, and they’re riveting to listen to.”
“Or maybe they’re just good at making up stories.”
Thym looked back. “Of course. But it’s different for you, isn’t it? All of this.” He waved at their surroundings. “You’re not concerned at all, are you?”
“Should I be?”
“I always am.”
“You’re a member of the Umalyn, a Priest of Ferrol. Have you no faith in our god?”
“I have every faith in Ferrol,” Thym said. “I trust Ferrol will do as Ferrol chooses. I spend my life working to increase the odds that He won’t rain misery upon us as a people. That is enough to ask. I don’t expect Ferrol to notice me personally, much less protect me from a rampaging giant, a life-threatening storm, or a horde of goblins.”
“You don’t look terribly frightened.”
Thym looked back. “Well, not this trip, of course. You’re with me.”
“And why does that matter?”
“You’re Miralyith,” Thym said, and turned around, leaving his back to her. Whether he meant her to hear or not, she caught the words said under his breath. “You’re the scariest thing out here.”
They reached the bottom of the valley, where a small stream ran through a chasm between scarred hills. There were few trees, and the rocky land was covered in a felt of grass. Green fields. It was as if they were in the middle of a massive bowl. All around, hills rose, and to the south one huge tooth speared that wondrous sky—Mount Mador. She knew the tale of how Fenelyus had created the mountain during the war with the Dherg, even though Fenelyus didn’t speak much about that time. The old fane avoided mentioning anything about the war, talking about it only in vague terms. To everyone else, the Great War had been her finest hour, but Fenelyus treated it as a shameful thing. “Mistakes of my youth,” she often called it. Mount Mador didn’t look like a mistake. The towering behemoth was astounding. The fact that Fenelyus had ordered the land to rise to such a height was beyond impressive.
I could never manage anything like that.
The sheer power and force of will required was more than Arion could imagine. She felt privileged just to see the mountain, to be inspired by it. Gryndal had been right: This trip was good for her.
Reaching a stream, Arion was forced to urge her mare to follow Thym across. So far, the trip had been along a fairly clear trail. Crossing looked to be dangerous, and neither Arion nor Naraspur liked the idea. The horse shifted from side to side, voicing her apprehension with unmistakable body language. Arion lay forward, clutching the horse’s neck with both arms as at last Naraspur moved forward. They made their way through the stream, which turned out to be shallower and easier than expected. Arion sat up and chided herself for being so concerned. Like most Fhrey, and certainly those who populated Estramnadon, she had lived a life of isolation, one that lacked adventure. She was starting to regret that.
“What are the Instarya like?” she asked as the trail widened enough for her to come alongside Thym.
He looked skeptical. “You haven’t met anyone from the warrior tribe?”
“Of course not. I grew up in the temple and then sequestered myself in the towers of the Miralyith. Oh, by the way, what’s that big light in the sky again?”
He rolled his eyes.
“That was a joke,” she told him with an encouraging smile.
He squinted his eyes, a hint of suspicion added to his face.
“You know what a joke is, right?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes. I just haven’t heard a Miralyith make one.”
“Given how well that one went over, I’m not surprised.”
He studied her a moment longer, then shrugged more to himself than to her. “The Instarya are…” He paused, searching the horizon. “You have to understand that they’ve been out here, left to guard the frontier, since the Dherg War. Lothian will be the fourth fane they’ve served under. After the conflict ended, they weren’t allowed to return home. Generations have been born and died, some without setting foot on our side of the Nidwalden. So over the centuries they’ve adapted.”
“Adapted?”
“Life out here is different. Luxuries are few, the weather is awful, there’s no culture to speak of, and everything is potentially dangerous. Even some plants are poisonous. The Instarya have developed a more robust outlook, a set of values that might appear crude to you at first. They’re more akin to the ancients in that they hold honor and courage sacred. To them these are not just ideas, not mere concepts or metaphors. The Instarya are a proud people and…”
“And?”
Thym looked uncomfortable. Refusing to face her, the plump priest wrapped in his white asica kept his focus up the trail. “And, well…they don’t like the Miralyith.”
Like all Fhrey in Estramnadon at the time, Arion had been at the Carfreign Arena to witness the challenge. At Fenelyus’s death, the leader of the Instarya had returned to Erivan and had been awarded the right to challenge Lothian for the throne by blowing the Horn of Gylindora.
The battle had been horribly one-sided. Zephyron had come armed with sword and shield; Lothian had used the Art. It had been the first time a challenge had been fought between a Miralyith and a member of another tribe. Lothian had sought to make an example and didn’t merely beat the Instarya leader—he made the contest a spectacle.
First, Lothian enveloped himself in a shield of air, rendering Zephyron’s weapons and fighting ability useless. Next came humiliation. Using the Art, Lothian turned his opponent into a puppet. Zephyron stripped, danced, and humiliated himself before the crowd. Lothian forced the Instarya leader to crawl on all fours, bark, howl, roll in mud, and eat grass like an animal. Then the show started a long walk into darkness as Lothian began his second act by forcing Zephyron to mutilate himself. The first offense was making him bite off and swallow each of his fingers.
At that point, Arion had risked admonishment by leaving. She had only reached the rear of the arena before vomiting. Later, she heard that the “battle” had continued for another two hours and that by the end of it she hadn’t been the only one to get sick. When Lothian finally granted the Instarya death, Zephyron had become unidentifiable as a Fhrey. No wonder the Instarya didn’t embrace the Miralyith as benevolent leaders.
Coming around a bend, Arion saw another stream. It looked much the same as the first. This second branch flowed even more lazily, and with newfound confidence she remained upright as Naraspur crossed. Although it wasn’t much deeper, the current was stronger, and as the horse was climbing out the far side, one of her hooves slipped. Arion felt the odd shift of balance. A stuttering step followed, bouncing Arion harshly and tilting her to one side. The fear of a dozen warnings and tales of tragedy flashed through her mind as she reached for the horse’s mane. Naraspur, who likely had quite enough of the river’s current, chose that moment to leap the remaining distance to the far bank. Arion failed to go with her.
With a horrified cry, the tutor to the princ
e fell. She struck rock and river, certain her life was over. Her last thought was how it was embarrassing to die in such a fashion. A painful moment later, she realized she wasn’t dead. Her hands, hip, left knee, and elbow hurt, and she was soaked, but other than that she was fine.
Thym turned his horse and rode back, staring at her in shock.
The pain was bad, the embarrassment worse, but it was the fear the river had caused that made her angry. Standing in the water and the shadow of Mount Mador, Arion began a weave. Recognizing the signs of magic, Thym retreated, taking Naraspur with him.
A whirlwind erupted, and the ground groaned, cracked, and screamed the way rock did when suddenly awakened. The river continued to laugh at her. Creeks and streams were overly light-headed things and had a tendency to laugh and chuckle over rocks, even when no one fell into them. This one had made the mistake of laughing at a Miralyith.
The whirlwind vanished, the ground settled, and the stream disappeared, rerouted far to the east. In its place she left a smooth bluish-stone walkway bordered by short rock walls. Nestled in alcoves, flower boxes overflowed with beautiful yellow blooms that had once dotted the river’s bank. In one recessed opening, a statue of an elegantly robed woman poured water from a pitcher into a cistern, the level of which remained constant. Arion’s clothes were dry once more, and she walked up a set of stairs that followed the slope to where Thym waited with a gaping mouth. She didn’t stop after reaching him and continued walking without saying a word.
“Your horse, Your Eminence,” he called.
“No, thank you. I’m walking from now on.”
They reached the top of the next ridge, Arion on foot, Thym riding his horse and leading Naraspur with a rope. From this new vantage point, Arion felt she could see the whole of the world. The sun was nestling on the backs of the distant mountains, bathing a vast valley in a sharp light. Where the sun kissed the hills, they were a brilliant orange. Everything else faded into dark purple. Night and day shook hands across eternity, and there, on a dominant hill overlooking a wide river, a singular tower rose beside a dome, both of them ringed by a great wall. Looking as if all the structures had sprouted naturally out of the crest of the promontory, the fortress and a small city stood watch over the massive plain below.
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