In the midst of the open space, beside the trail, stood a single standing stone: a boundary marker, I realized. As we rode closer, I saw the barely-visible remains of another road, which joined the Muir Pass Road a few feet after the stone. By common, wordless consent, we reined, looking at the stone and the place where the other road had led northwest across the clearing to the woods on the other side. Iminor drew closer to the stone without dismounting, riding off the road until he could touch the words carved on its surface.
“Banbagor,” he read from the side nearest the road. He cued the horse again and rode around to the opposite side. “Muir.”
This had been the end of their mutual boundary, back when such issues mattered. Here travelers from the human realms had decided which road to take. I wondered what errands might have prompted their trips, tried and failed to calculate how many leagues lay between this spot and the closest of the settlements we’d passed.
“Aballo,” Amien said decisively, pointing towards the mountain. Iminor cued his horse back onto the road, and we set out again; horror and grief at the evil of their great goddess overtook me once more. Suddenly I was doubly glad to be leaving the Tanaan realms behind.
From that point we rode steadily upward. This felt like northern Tellan: like the final day of the road from Aballo to the place I had thought of simply as home; like the trails to the mountain valleys in which we had hunted. The party with which I rode might have been any hunting party or pleasure-riding expedition, had the mood been better and the pace less urgent. For the first time in years, the names and faces of the pack of young Tellan men who had always trailed in my wake manifested in my mind. Sons of tiarna and seach, all of them: no doubt their lives had continued precisely as planned. No doubt Tellan was exactly what it had always been.
I could only hope none of them would make the trip to Teamair for the Moot season. If everyone of consequence in the Beallan realms knew I had lost my throne rather than relinquishing it voluntarily, until this spring at least they had known no more: whatever the men of the Aballo Order thought of me, they had closed ranks on this topic as effectively as ever. None of them disclosed to anyone outside the Order that I had once counted myself among their number, nor the circumstances surrounding my father’s death. I was Amien’s great failure, the loose thread that might prompt men of consequence to ask questions the Order couldn’t afford. The wizards’ silence outside the Order would remain absolute.
But the tiarna of Tellan knew I had taken training at Aballo. Their fear of what I was and what I might do had made it easy for my uncle to raise them against me. I had little reason to hope my presence at Teamair would fail to rekindle the old stories in the mind of anyone who knew—nor to hope that they wouldn’t spread the tales during the season, drippingly juicy gossip they were. It was too easy to imagine how the stories would run. And I would have no defense against the truth. When we reached a wide spot in the punishing trail, and Amien reined to look out across the broadening vista, I seized the distraction with both hands.
“Yes,” Amien said in a satisfied tone as the rest of us gathered around him. “This is what I remembered. It’s been such a long time I wasn’t sure how well memory served.”
“What is this?” Letitia asked, looking around.
“A rest-stop,” Amien said. “The caravans would stop in these places at midday.”
“Caravans?” Iminor blurted.
Amien nodded, smiling. “It was your people who established the route; the caravans were almost exclusively Danaan. I traveled this road a few times, when I was in the service of the mora of Muir. There’s always a stopping-point at midday on this route—and it was a long stop, several hours, when the caravans traveled it, and anybody who didn’t keep pace with them was just borrowing trouble. I wonder whether the cook-houses at the campsites still stand.” He dismounted and gave the horse an affectionate pat. The beast began to cautiously sample the local flora; the rest of us followed the wizard to the ground.
“There should be water nearby, a spring or something,” Amien said thoughtfully, looking around.
“This was a well-established route,” I said, astonished. “I’ve never heard or read about it.”
Amien shrugged. “It’s been my experience that the things everyone knows about are the least likely to be covered in the histories. I suppose it all seems too obvious at the time.”
I shook my head.
“But yes: it was a well-established route. Danaan caravans, mostly fine-goods trade between the ports on the Ruillin and the Four Realms north of the mountains, via their outpost at Nimah on Lethin Isle.”
“Nimah?” Letitia said. She looked at Iminor, who shrugged.
“Lethin Isle,” I said, yet more incredulous. I knew the place, though I’d never set foot there: Lethin Isle stands at the northern end of the Ruillin, a few miles south of Goibniu. “I thought that place was vacant.”
Amien smiled ruefully, spreading his gaze among us. “It is now. Centuries ago, before—well, before the Deluge, I suppose, though of course none of us on the Beallan side knew about the Deluge…” He cleared his throat, gaze on something far away. He shook his head. “People wondered what had happened to Nimah, of course. But everyone was just… gone. If anyone went all the way across the mountains looking for answers, the rest of us never heard about it. I suppose everyone at Nimah went home, to Muir… or what was left of it.” He fell silent again, and turned his head to gaze out across the land below us.
“Were there… other such outposts?” Letitia said after a moment.
Amien seemed to snap back into the present moment. “What? No, not to my knowledge. Most Danaan trade was by sea; these caravans served Muir more than anyone else.”
“Fáill, perhaps,” Iminor mused.
Amien nodded. “Perhaps. I never really paid attention. Hell, I never set foot on Lethin until after Nimah… until after the Deluge.” Again his gaze ranged after something I couldn’t see. He shook his head. “I was a fool.”
A wry, reluctant smile creased his face, and he looked at Letitia. “Over and over again. Well, then. If I recall correctly, they would unburden the horses at the break.”
I nodded. “That’s how they do it in the mining caravans in Tellan.”
The wizard glanced at me. “You’ve ridden those trails?”
I nodded again, swallowing against the tension in my throat. Tellan’s emerald mines are her greatest riches, greater even than her cattle. Of course I had ridden with those caravans, walked those mines, learned those miners’ ways. I didn’t want to talk about any of it. But the wizard just nodded, satisfied.
“Good,” he said. “I’m sure your memory is much fresher than mine.”
For an ordinary caravan on a mountain trail, the greatest fear—aside from the hazards of the terrain—is bandits. We had the Básghilae to worry about, of course—but also time: the measure of the opportunities Letitia’s enemy had to muster his reserves after we knocked down his forces; the waning of the days before the Bealtan Moot; most especially the limits of the stamina on which Amien drew to ward our campsites night after night. It required an act of discipline for me to remain at the rest-stop long enough for the horses and riders to grow fully rested; when Telliyn rose late in the afternoon, within two days of her fullness, I had to fight long and hard against the impulse to urge my horse faster. When we arrived in the evening’s campsite, and I looked across that narrow lumpy space to the trail rising onward after it, I knew we were in trouble: if the mountains truly were a two-day crossing, tonight’s camp would have been in the pass itself.
“Fouzh,” Amien muttered, looking around the campsite as we rode in.
“This isn’t a two-day trail,” I said, forgetting to school my voice to calm. It wasn’t surprising that he’d forgotten so small a detail over the centuries; but that hardly eased the blow.
“I fouzhir see that!” the wizard snapped. “You think you’re not looking forward to the extra night!”
I
couldn’t help it: I looked at the reins, at my hands. Guilt welled inside me. I would need new gloves soon; I’d ridden more in the past two months than in the previous ten years. A better man would offer to take on the responsibility for tonight’s wards himself. But were wards really necessary or even desirable? They would certainly make us easier to find. Were I to attack this place, how would I go about it?
“Assault from above,” I said, mostly to myself.
“What?” Amien said.
I nodded. “Hold off on the wards, will you? Let me take Ogma and Manannan and see what’s ahead on the trail.”
Amien gave me a skeptical look. “I don’t like those odds.”
I surprised myself with a grin. “If things get dicey, we’ll send Ogma back.”
“What?” the young Tan blurted, but Manannan gave voice to a wry laugh.
“Back in an hour,” I said. “Two at the outside.”
“Ellion—”
I didn’t wait for the argument, just cued my horse and led the two Tans up the mountain. The shadows were long, but generous amounts of light still bathed the trail. Some parts of the trail held nothing but bare rock; such areas would grow only more frequent tomorrow. But tonight enough solid earth and low mountain grasses occupied the path to reassure me that no one had recently passed this way. Were the Básghilae behind us on the trail, then? Or had they taken another route altogether, planning an ambush on the other side of the mountains? I certainly wouldn’t attempt an attack from below on this trail, not unless I was out of other options.
When the sun disappeared behind the mountain, I turned us reluctantly back towards the campsite. We had seen no sign of other riders on the trail; but that wasn’t proof of safety. I wondered what exactly I had been hoping to find, what I would have done if only three of us had stumbled on a full contingent of Básghilae. Manannan was dead already, of course; but how would I have protected Ogma? I felt as if there were a deep pool of bitumen inside my own mind, and the answers lay within. But I had led two men under my command out here with me; the only thing to do was set the question aside and get them back to base before some other form of idiocy manifested.
Finally we reached the campsite. All was quiet, but Amien looked worn; I would have given my realm, had I still possessed one, for a skin of brandy. Fortunately no one here was in possession of such a thing. Shortly after we arrived, Nuad, Mattiaci, and Tru rode up from the trail below the camp. Had this been Aballo, and not a mixed-race party in the mountains, I might have kissed the armsmaster.
“All clear below, Lord,” he said to me as they entered the camp. “If they’re following us, it’s from some distance.”
I nodded, smiling without planning it. “Let’s post watches tonight, then.” I turned to Amien. “My lord, I think we’re reasonably secure here. Let’s save your strength, and minimize our enemy’s access to what you’re doing.”
The next day was more of the same: punishing mountain trails, a break at midday that required all my discipline to respect, and a second climb in the afternoon. By the day’s second leg, some of the hollows and crags we passed bore traces of last season’s stubborn snow. And this time, finally, at the end of the day’s trail, the pass hove into view.
It looked lovelier than it had any right to: a long, surprisingly broad sweep of a hollow swathed in unreasonably lush green grass. Without discussion everyone began riding faster, eager to cross the final, narrow ledge and scramble up the last steep bank to the promise of rest just above. Even Iminor stopped looking nervously down from the narrows.
“There’s a lake up here, if memory serves,” Amien announced to no one in particular. “Too cold for bathing, even in summer, but I think I just might stick my feet in…”
I chuckled. “Spoken like a true southerner. I’m sure it’s lovely.”
Ahead of me, Iminor reined suddenly. “Wait—”
Something prickled up my spine. I looked past Iminor, at the crest of the bank leading down from the pass; one of our enemy’s ghouls met my gaze. Of course it would be here.
The ledge we rode, though comfortably wide enough for even a laden caravan horse, couldn’t safely admit two; and the bank leading down from the pass was too steep to allow any kind of speed on the way down. But that didn’t stop the Básghilae from catapulting across the bank at a breathtaking pace, didn’t keep the first rider from slipping past Nuad and heading into the space beside Amien, towards Letitia. I shouted, but from the middle of the train a man can do little in such a situation. But even as Nuad engaged the second rider and Amien sent a casting of power on a miraculously true trajectory to eliminate the one behind Nuad’s, the wizard managed to communicate some signal to his horse that sent its rump wide, sent the first Básghil’s mount tumbling off the ledge and down the long, jagged slope below. Several of us shouted; Iminor said, “Ti—”—and, apparently understanding, she backed her horse along the wall at our left hand and let Iminor slip past her on the outside. My heart leapt into my throat at the maneuver; for Iminor and his evident fear of heights it was nothing short of the act of a god.
Between one breath and the next, I felt something shift: not the ground, but something else I couldn’t lay hands on, something immediate and perilous. I had a momentary sense of time stopping and lurching forward again. Amien let fly with two more bolts of green; two more ghouls fell limply from saddles. Behind me, I heard a muffled explosion—and above, the unmistakable sound of the face of the mountain giving way.
“Rockslide!” I shouted, half-mad with the impossibility of doing anything, sandwiched in the midst of the train as I was. All the horses in the train jostled a step or two forward, as if they might outrun it. Either I had the same instinctive response or my horse followed his fellows’ lead. But the way was blocked, of course.
“Fouzh!”Amien yelled, turned swiftly in the saddle, and using his sword the way some druids employ wands or staves, cast a quick binding over the spot in which the party clung to the trail, then turned back to the battle. The binding shimmered in a thousand hues of green, translucent; from within the boundary I saw rocks and dirt and trees pouring across its exterior and plummeting into the gorge below. A secondary tremor shivered up the mountain’s face, and the ledge collapsed behind me.
My horse’s rear hooves scrabbled for purchase; I threw myself against his neck, and with a great surge of the hindquarters he scrambled forward onto more secure ground. Simultaneously the avalanche shifted above us; rocks veered suddenly sideways across the binding, sweeping the attackers nearest the front from the ledge. Nuad and Amien drew back under the cover of the binding, crowding everyone further; behind me, a horrifying gap separated me from Mattiaci, Tru, and the back half of the party. Bruane and Greine were gone.
There was nothing to do but wait for the slide to end: I slipped from the saddle to stand between my horse and the face of the mountain. I glanced behind me, across the gap, seeing the Tanaan on the other side slip out of their saddles as well. And between me and Mattiaci on the wall, under the preternatural stillness of the binding, I finally spotted a series of regular holes: the sort of holes a drill makes. I understood immediately, and desire to leap into a chasm gripped me: those holes were the outer faces of the sort of bores that miners make, to bury explosives in a wall of rock they want to bring down.
They had blown just a fraction too far away to take me. Instead Bruane and Greine had lost their lives. I knocked the back of my head against the wall; pain exploded through my skull. I wanted more, but I forced myself to stop. The Tanaan taboo against a person under a death-vendetta accepting hospitality made sudden, blinding sense: this was not just my blood-price anymore. Whoever intended to bring me down was no longer concerned about collateral damage; once again, I was a danger to the rest of the party. To confess the truth was to light a beacon far more dangerous than the arcane signatures of one of Amien’s workings. If we got Letitia to Goibniu alive, it must be the last time any of them saw me, and I could not even offer a true apology. My thro
at knotted in anticipation of the look of betrayal I would see in Letitia’s eyes, the disappointment I would see in Amien. I knocked my head against the wall once more.
Finally the avalanche stopped. People started moving; I forced myself to rouse.
“Wait,” I said. “Give it a few minutes. Sometimes these things just pause.” Green flared in my peripheral vision; Amien gave voice to a noise of satisfaction.
“They’re still there?” Letitia said.
“They seem to be leaving, now,” Amien said, still sounding gratified. “Dear gods, what a relief to be back in places with power I can use!”
After some measureless time of quiet, we agreed it was probably safe to move. Amien sensibly left the binding in place as the party filed forward, past Básghilae corpses and across rockslide rubble that shifted in ways that made me catch my breath each time a rider moved. Once Letitia’s horse had scrambled across the rockfall to the relative safety of the grass above, I said quietly, “My lord.”
“What?” Amien said, turning to look at me. Delight at having regained access to power sources he understood fairly radiated from him.
“The ledge… collapsed between me and the back of the party,” I said.
The wizard drew in a swift, dismayed breath, asking questions with his eyes.
I sighed. “We lost Bruane and Greine. The rest of them are all right, but there’s a gap in the ledge…”
Amien nodded, walking back across the ledge towards me. For a moment we stared at the gap in silence. He didn’t seem to notice the bore-holes; maybe he just didn’t understand what he saw. He hailed from vining country, not mining country, after all.
The Shadow of the Sun (The Way of the Gods) Page 29