by GJ Kelly
Other news arrived by boat from East Forkings shortly after you left and there is more to tell in addition to this; the three birds given by Harribek Anhelo to Lord Rak as a test of their training were released in Sudshear, in mid voyage, and Nordshear, and the one released from the harbour at Nordshear succeeded in finding its way back to the roost. It bore a brief message from Lord Rak announcing that elves had been sighted riding under Juria’s banner on long range patrol in the vicinity of the Hallencloister. Be careful miheth, they were not elves of the Kindred Rangers.
This news was confirmed after the arrival of a messenger despatched from Sudshear by Serre Mawgan of Chancery under guard and escort together with two heavy chests containing many inchbars of silver bearing guildmarks of assay from Arrun, Mornland, and Threlland. This has been deposited in the down-below, though some I have distributed for the purchase of winter stores. Do not be concerned with such mundane matters miheth, rather be concerned with the news brought by Serre Mawgan’s messenger.
In addition to the news from the mayor concerning the fortification of the village of Doosen, we have now learned from Serre Mawgan’s trusted sources, merchants of repute mostly, with whom he has many dealings on the Crown’s behalf, that Ferdan’s fortifications have been strengthened and elves stationed there once more, this time under Juria’s banner rather than that of the Kindred Army. The town of Bardin in the southwest of Juria some four days north of the border with Callodon likewise is now home to a force of elfguard. Vardon, too, close to Hellin’s Castletown, is home to others of the elfguard who use it as a hub for their patrols rather than the castletown itself.
Miheth Gawain, take care. These elves all bear the symbol you call Tau, and are loyal to the Toorseneth. A few also are soldiers of the Eastguard re-deployed now that the threat to Elvendere’s western border is believed diminished, if it ever truly existed. Thus, Thallanhall must have given its blessing to the disposition of these elven forces in Juria; provincial governors would not be permitted to act alone in such a manner. The alliance between Hellin and the Toorseneth is being strengthened by Thallanhall, unwittingly perhaps, but beware, you are welcome neither in Juria nor in Elvendere. Word of your destruction of Urgenenn’s Tower is already in Sudshear and travelling quickly north by ship. Perhaps it is already known in Hellin’s Hall, and therefore at the Toorseneth.
I have learned that Ognorm is preparing to leave Last Ridings to accompany you on your journey north, so I must rush to pass this to him before he crosses the river. He is said to be heartbroken by your departure without him, given that he was sent by our friend Eryk to watch over you. Be kind to him, Gawain. I know you meant no offence either to him or to Threlland, but sometimes, miheth, your ignorance of the ways of other lands causes ripples of which you often remain completely unaware. Expect to be chided for this and for other reasons on your return.
Take care, miheth. I like not the threat of this new-spawned Grimmand. If the wizards of the Toorseneth can conceive of such foul creatures and make them proof against the fire of wizard Allazar’s staff, perhaps they might conceive of such creatures and make them proof against the Sight which is so effective at detecting such evil.
Know that your queen and your son await you; be utterly ruthless towards those who would prevent your safe return to us and our love.
I am your queen, your lady, your Ranger Leeny, and all things you would have me be.
E.
Gawain sighed, re-read the last few lines again, and folded the letter.
“Trouble, Longsword?”
“It would seem Hellin of Juria learned a thing or two about the wielding of power after all.”
oOo
7. Fwi-end
Five days later and the October winds which had their eyes watering almost every mile of the way suddenly died, and the air became eerily calm. It was early evening, chilly, and though there were still perhaps two hours or more light left in the day for safe travelling, Gawain called a halt and made camp behind a broad clump of gorse, which he hoped might serve as a something of a windbreak should the blustery gales rise again.
“By my estimation,” Allazar declared, heaving his saddle from his horse and dumping it unceremoniously on the ground, “We are perhaps two days south of the Hallencloister line.”
“That would explain the strange calm in the air about us,” Gawain replied, examining Gywn’s hooves. “Elayeen spoke of this region as being uncommon eerie where the weather was concerned when she passed this way earlier this year.”
“It is hardly uncommon eerie, Longsword,” Allazar sniffed, “People have ascribed all sorts of nonsense to wizards which no amount of power could possibly achieve. Affecting weather is one of those things.”
“Arr, ‘tis odd though that the wind died like that. Edscratchy odd, eh Ven?”
“I cannot say, friend Ognorm,” Venderrian replied, “I am unfamiliar with these lands, and seldom were such gales experienced either in Minyorn or in Elvenheth.”
“Arr. Well, I ain’t from around ‘ere neither, but the land’s all flat hereabouts and there’s nought like hills or mountains to still a breeze so sudden. It’s like we tromped into a hole or summink.”
“There is no hole here either, master Ognorm,” Allazar smiled. “It is merely an effect of nature’s making, like the eye of a storm, perhaps a region of calm air created by vortices induced by geography more distant than we can see.”
Ognorm sniffed, and his bushy eyebrows shot up. He stood holding his saddle as casually as the others might hold a bag of buttered muffins, his cloak hanging loose like a square sail from those broad shoulders of his. “Arr well, lifter and shifter I be, Serre wizard, and eyes I got. I know there’s no hole, it weren’t meant to be taken literal.”
Gawain grinned to himself, and satisfied that Gwyn was comfortable and in good health, fished a lump of frak from his pocket and wandered clear of the gorse to survey the land around them. There wasn’t much to see, in truth. They’d avoided occasional homesteads and a few hamlets, but seen no sign of any larger settlements along the way. Better land for farming or grazing lay to the west on the plains of Juria or to the east nearer the coastal plains of Arrun.
He thought of Kistin Fallowmead, recalling the dampness in Elayeen’s eyes when she had described burying the child, and the tears flowing when she had described the pitiful possessions that had meant so much to the poor young girl. This was a lonely place to die, pursued by Yarken of the Tansee. A lonely place to die by any means.
But, in spite of Allazar’s protestations and the continuing good-natured banter still passing back and forth between the wizard, the dwarf, and the elf, there really was something unsettling in the air. It was as though the breezes were trying to sneak unnoticed past the Hallencloister lest they incur the displeasure of the wizards within those high walls.
Elayeen’s warnings still sat snug and dry in their waxed leather packet, tucked into an inside pocket of his tunic. They were very close here to the Jurian border, though few of that land would ever lay claim to the Hallencloister and the rise upon which it had sat for millennia. Citadel and enclave in darken days of old before Morloch’s rising, citadel and centre of wizardly learning which had trained and loosed Morloch upon the world, and later worked to bind him beyond the Teeth. For centuries wizards had been raised and educated there, then turned out into the world, and while most people had welcomed them and their knowledge and power, all knew well Gawain’s feelings on the matter, and those feelings had been shared in numbers growing rapidly since Kings’ Council at Ferdan.
Gawain felt distinctly uneasy, and not just for the sudden stillness of the air around them. The Hallencloister was an immense walled fortress with not one but four stone-built keeps any one of which would be the envy of any castletown in the lowlands, and probably in the Empire too. With the walls manned by a guard raised and maintained for its common defence, and filled with whitebeards of all ranks well able to provide for its mystic protection, it would seem like ma
dness even to contemplate assailing gates shut against the world. Which perhaps explained why no-one ever had.
But still the images swam from strange aquamire mists when Gawain closed his eyes to ponder his ever-decreasing box of worms. Few there were now of those wriggling clues and portents, and the manner in which the Hallencloister filled his musing suggested that none were anywhere near as important as the fortress-college some two or three days ride away.
And what would he do if no answer came when he knocked upon those mighty gates? What would he do if the reply he received was a curt ‘bugger off’ the like of which Brock himself had once received at Harks Hearth far to the south? Elayeen had asked him the same question, in the small hours of their last night together. He’d had no answer for her then, and all the days of his journey had revealed to him no answer along the way.
“What say you, Longsword?” came a quiet call from the wizard, repeating himself to cut through Gawain’s reverie.
“What say I to what?”
“There are rabbits, yonder…”
“No. No fires. Elayeen warned us of elven patrols riding with the Greys of the RJC long-rangers. I don’t want to embarrass the friends and allies who served so nobly under Bek’s command at Far-gor by having to shoot the Toorsencreed out of their saddles beside them.”
Allazar looked shocked. “Do you think it would come to that? If we encountered such a patrol? Technically, we have to cross Juria’s land to achieve the Hallencloister…”
“We all have reason to despise those who bear the mark of the Tau, Allazar,” Gawain announced, rejoining his companions and unpacking his bedroll from his saddle. “They are without doubt enemies of all the kindred, and their convenient alliance with Hellin of Juria reduces that enmity not one jot. The madness of her grief does not excuse the Toorseneth’s sending of seed, spore and now spawn against good people of these lands.”
“Made some good mates in them grey riders o’ Juria,” Ognorm mumbled sadly.
“As did we all, my friend. And I still hold them all as such. They are hardly to blame for the misfortunes imposed upon their land by a queen made harridan fool and dangerous by heartbreak.”
“Yet if they should stand to the fore in support of Toorsengard, miThal?”
Gawain paused, and thought. “We shall cross that particular bridge when we come to it, Ven. I would prefer to honour Bek’s memory by drawing neither string nor steel against the Greys of Juria. But I shall neither die nor surrender for that memory should they draw string or steel against me.”
“I cannot imagine the mood in Hellin’s court,” Allazar sighed. “All those who stood at Far-gor did so knowing Elvendere betrayed all these lands, and that only the one hundred and twelve Kindred Rangers who rode out from the Morrentill with us possessed honour enough to risk all alongside us there. Now to see Hellin wed to a boy who kept himself safe far from the war, and to see others who hid within their forest now openly bearing arms in their towns and villages… it beggars belief.”
“This Serat must be an orator of some power,” Gawain grimaced, “Though he didn’t strike me as especially remarkable when we encountered him in the forest.”
“Doubtless he had his orders to remain polite,” the wizard agreed, “Though he bore the arrogance of the Viell in both manner and speech.”
“Not all the thalangard there that day were Toorsengard, miThal,” Venderrian said softly. “There are yet a great many loyal to Thallanhall, if not to Thal-Hak himself, who know nothing of the treachery of the Toorseneth.”
“Hmm,” Allazar frowned, and scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Then Thal-Hak took precautions to ensure his words were conveyed accurately, and our parting observed by at least some independent witnesses. It would explain why our lady’s possessions were handed to her by Serat without interference or examination.”
“Then let’s hope we don’t encounter any of the Toorsengard on our journey to the Hallencloister. If word got back to Thallanhall that we’d slaughtered a bunch of their Eastguard there’s no telling what the ramifications might be. Keep good watch, Ven. I’d prefer to hide from them than risk a confrontation once we’re on Jurian soil.”
“MiThal.”
“These should be gentler times,” Allazar complained, plopping heavily onto his blankets. “The battle won, the canyon in the north gaping, and an ancient evil beyond the Eastbinding destroyed at last. Yet here we sit, discussing in tones most serious the very real risk of combat which might spark off a blaze of open conflict with brave allies.”
“There you sit, you lazy goit, the rest of us are still on our feet. Did you so much as check your horse’s hooves before hurling your backside onto your bedroll?”
“Ah. Apologies…” Allazar raised the staff and made to heave himself up with it, but Gawain relented.
“Don’t bother, I’ll do it. You warm your tired old bones and talk our ears off while the rest of us work to make a respectable camp.”
“I’m not that old, Longsword.”
“That’s a matter of perspective and opinion,” Gawain drew his boot knife and began making a drama of scraping mud from hooves, though in truth the ground hereabouts had been firm enough and the going good. “Especially since you refuse to tell anyone precisely how old you really are.”
Allazar sniffed, and drew a small paper packet from his saddle-bag. The contents were clearly sticky, and he took great care while peeling back the paper.
“What’s that?” Gawain asked, “Not the remnants of another ancient honey-bar?”
“No,” Allazar declared haughtily. “It is the remnants of a bag of mint-sugars kindly given to me by steward Arbo for the journey. Alas, with the rains we had, they got damp, and now it’s one big lump of mint-sugar.”
“He gave you mint-sugars?”
“He did.”
“He didn’t bloody give me any,” Gawain protested, recognising the deftness of the wizard’s distracting them yet again from the question of his age.
“He appreciates the value of a wizard,” Allazar declared happily, prising a piece off the sticky lump and popping it into his mouth. “Ann heef fwi-end ov you.”
“He’s frightened of me? Why? I haven’t given him the shadow of a reason to be frightened of me.”
Ognorm shuddered theatrically, shaving a slice of frak from a lump.
“At least we ain’t got one o’ them things after us,” the dwarf sighed. “Couldn’t sleep in my room at ‘ome without a light on, lest that shadow-creature followed me all the way back to the ‘mark.”
“Aye,” Allazar agreed, “It was a foul creature indeed.”
“D’ye think it’s dead, Serre wizard? That thing?”
Allazar shrugged. “In truth, I know not. Without the Orb to sustain it, perhaps it withered and died.”
“Arr, unless it knew how to swim, and followed us clear out to sea, and sits there now at the bottom o’ the ocean, wrapped around that chest.” Ognorm’s voice dropped, and he sat, frak and knife in hand, drifting into memory. “When I told ‘is Majesty the tale, there in his own rooms sittin’ by the fire, and ‘im hanging on the words, he wept that Threlland’s honour was restored. That such a beast could be born of a thing made by a dwarf… by the Teeth that were hard even for a king to bear.”
“The shadow-creature wasn’t dwarf-made, Ognorm,” Gawain sighed, and gave Allazar’s horse a pat on the neck, content now for its well-being. “It was the Toorseneth made it by corrupting the virgin device Theo of Smeltmount constructed.”
“Arr well, I spose it was, melord, come to that. But it’s no end of relief to me and me king both to think o’ that foul creature dead and gone.”
Gawain flicked a glance at the dwarf, and at Allazar, and then turned his attention to his own bedroll and the resumption of his meal.
“Oh now there’s a sign a trouser-brick’s a-coming! I bin with you a long time, melord, and know summink of yer ways. You don’t reckon that shadow-thing is dead an’ gone, do you?”
Gawain paused, eyeing his frak while he sat cross-legged on his blankets. Then he cocked his head to the right, to where the dwarf sat between himself and the wizard. “There were other devices tested in Elvendere, Ognorm. All of those failed too.”
“And all of them doubtless also corrupted by Viell of Toorsen’s Tower,” Allazar sighed.
Ognorm blinked several times, and his bushy eyebrows rose and fell. He eyed the knife and frak in his hands, took a deep breath, and let it out in a long and heartfelt sigh.
“Bugger.” He said, and fell silent, speaking not another word that night.
oOo
8. ‘Weed and Watchmen
There was no convenient line marking the ground at the border between Arrun and Juria, though the fact of the Hallencloister on the western horizon was a fair indication that Gawain and his companions would have crossed it some time ago had there been one.
“We’ll not reach it by nightfall,” Allazar declared emphatically, and he was right. Dusk, a dark and threatening grey-black, was already falling, the moon in its first quarter already above the horizon in the south, clouds drifting slowly in front of it testifying to the continued strange calm of the weather in the vicinity of the D’ith citadel.
“No,” Gawain agreed. “It’s some way off. When you said it was on a rise I didn’t think it would be so pronounced as to lift the place above the far horizon like that.”
The wizard shrugged. “The slope is gentle enough, Longsword, once you’re upon it. It seems higher than it is because there is something of a dip or a hollow around the rise.”