Chapter Two
Durik paused inside the citadel’s gatehouse while Logan dismounted. The castle’s courtyard was a small square of packed dirt, sloping upwards to the pinnacle rock that bore the central keep. To the right stood a row of wooden stalls – stables and livestock pens, Durik assumed. To the left was a log barracks cut from Forthyn pine, set against the inside of the curtain wall.
A boy from the castle’s stables took Logan’s horse. Durik waited for Logan to fix his cloak, while Lady Damhán watched.
“I take it Pathfinder Durik has told you why you are here, Master Lashley?” she asked.
“No, actually,” Logan responded, refastening the cloak’s expensive-looking clasp. “No one’s told me anything, more’s the pity!”
“I thought it would be best coming from the one who sought me out in the first place,” Durik said.
“That may be,” Lady Damhán replied, seeming to ponder the orc’s words for a moment before turning on her heel and striding towards the keep.
“Come,” she called back to them. “Now that your companion has arrived, pathfinder, the baroness will want to see you both in person.”
“Didn’t that horrid captain say she was sitting in council?” Logan asked, hurrying to catch up.
“He did, and she is,” Damhán responded without slowing her pace. “And I should be with her. But her instructions were clear. I was to remain vigilant for your arrival and inform her immediately, council session or not. We have been waiting for you for some time, Master Lashley.”
“I won’t deny ‘master’ has a fine ring to it, but please, call me Logan,” he said, giving her a winning smile. Damhán didn’t respond.
Durik followed behind them both, up the short, steep path to the keep’s doorway, wondering as he went if he had done the right thing. Sending letters to Logan, Ulma and Dezra had been a gamble. The task he had been hired for called for speed – delaying over two weeks hadn’t pleased the baroness. But Durik had made the inclusion of his old friends a non-negotiable clause of his employment, and thankfully Lady Damhán had spoken in favor of the idea of including them. It seemed that if Baroness Adelynn was willing to purchase the services of the most renowned orc pathfinder in Terrinoth, she was also happy to have the entire Borderland Four working for her. She had already told Durik she would spare nothing for this task.
Damhán led them into the entrance hall of Highmont’s keep, a chilly, towering stone space whose upper limits were crisscrossed by spars and a timber walkway. A pair of servants hurried past with baskets full of dirty linen. Damhán carried on to a wooden staircase at the hall’s far end and up to a second level. This one had a timber floor covered with pelt rugs, daylight shafting in through a trio of arrow slits in the outer wall. There was a door opposite the stairway, and a fire burned low in a large hearth set across the room, the carved stone roc above it blackened by centuries of smoke.
“Wait here,” Lady Damhán ordered. She opened the far door, and Durik caught a snatch of conversation before it thudded shut behind her.
“Well, she’s a charmer,” Logan said, moving to stand by the fire.
“She is the reason we are here,” Durik responded. “The Lady Damhán was the one who recommended my skills to the baroness.”
“And who recommended mine?” Logan asked.
“I did. Lady Damhán agreed.”
“Does that mean the baroness didn’t?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
Logan grunted and looked down with a rueful expression at his mud-splattered boots Unnoticed, Durik smiled. He may be silver-haired now, a little thinner and a little more stooped, but Logan Lashley was still the same rogue the orc had known during his adventures across Terrinoth. Those days in Sudanya, in the sunbaked ruins and the dark, creeping, infested tunnels beneath, had bound them, entwined the strands of their fate into a single, strong cord. Durik had known he would come as soon as the letter reached him. Even so, privately he rejoiced at seeing him again. It had been years, and each one had felt longer than the last.
He moved to stand by Logan in front of the fireplace, still smiling to himself – the physical differences between the two of them had only become more pronounced with age. Logan was the image of self-made Terrinoth wealth, while Durik looked every inch the Broken Plains tracker, still broad and thickly muscled, his thighs and upper arms ringed with Guk’gor knot tattoos, shoulders draped in pelts and feather fetishes. He wondered if Logan had noticed the more subtle changes the years had brought on – his charcoal-gray skin was paler and leatherier, and his topknot had turned snowy white. Then there were the scars. Those, at least, he was proud of.
“We make for unlikely friends, little rogue,” he said. Logan looked up at him and narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t get maudlin on me, pathfinder. This place is depressing enough as it is.”
“You have grown soft.”
“Everyone is soft compared to you,” Logan responded, his gaze turning to the dying embers before him. He suddenly looked very old. Durik felt a pang of regret. Perhaps it had been wrong to summon him here, to drag him away from his own hearth and home, the place he had earned with gold won all those years ago. Durik suppressed the sudden guilt. He could not do this alone. There were some wildernesses even too vast for him to track, and that was without considering the manmade obstacles he expected to face in the coming days. Orcs were rarely welcome in the region they would be traveling to.
“How is Ulma?” Logan asked abruptly, as though reading his thoughts. “I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but did she really have to go all the way to Upper Forthyn rather than meet me here?”
“I told you, she arrived before you,” Durik said. “My letter found her just across the border, in Dhernas.”
“Still conducting all sorts of ridiculous experiments, I imagine? I’m truly shocked that she hasn’t blown herself to pieces yet.”
“She… has not changed a great deal. The baroness requested that she begin investigating while I waited for you. She has gone on ahead.”
“Investigating what?” Logan demanded. Before Durik could speak, he heard the sound of a raised voice from beyond the door Lady Damhán had passed through. The words were indistinct, but clearly angry. They both exchanged a glance.
“Sounds like the gray lady is pissing someone off,” Logan muttered.
“Lady Damhán is a good ally,” Durik said. “Without her counsel none of us would be here.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, Durik,” Logan said. Seconds later the door swung open. A guard in the baroness’s livery stepped outside and stood to attention as a stream of figures exited past him. There were about a dozen of them, all aging men, a few of them portly. They were well dressed in padded, embroidered shirts or doublets trimmed with fur, feathered bonnets and chaperons decorating their heads. Logan offered those that glanced his way a bow, while Durik watched them impassively. Their looks were vehement.
“I’m guessing those are the burgesses,” Logan hissed to Durik as the last of them began to descend the stairwell.
“They seem… unhappy,” Durik responded.
“They are unhappy because I have just curtailed their weekly council hearing with the baroness,” Lady Damhán said, standing in the doorway like a gray specter guarding her ancestral home.
“You may enter,” she went on, beckoning them inside. Logan glanced up at Durik before following him through the door. The guard closed it behind them.
The chamber beyond was clearly built to impress. A vaulted ceiling soared over a long wooden table flanked by high-backed chairs, carved in the likeness of rampant rocs. The walls were hung with tapestries depicting scenes of hunting and battle alongside instances of Forthyn’s history that Durik didn’t recognize – an elf and a human being wed beneath a half moon, a dragon struck down by a golden-haired archer, a crooked towe
r sat high amidst mountain peaks. Daylight shone into the chamber from its far end, where blue drapes half hid what looked like a balcony jutting out from the keep’s north face. Durik had been in the chamber once before, when he had first met with Baroness Adelynn. He glanced sideways at Logan. The old rogue didn’t seem taken by his new surrounds – his eyes were on the two figures standing at the opposite end of the table.
One was an obese, bearded man clad in a short red jacket that bulged around his ample gut. He wore a gold-embroidered cape over his left shoulder and had a small, fur bonnet perched on the side of his head. He was speaking to the second figure, a woman, as tall and stately as Damhán, clad in a rich brown and gold suircoat and skirts that trailed to the floor. About her shoulders was a heavy mantle of white roc feathers that shone brilliantly in the light streaming between the drapes behind her. Her hair, piled up around her head, was the color of hazelnut dashed through with streaks of white, while her features were pale, full-lipped and strong. There was a sword at her hip. She turned gray eyes on Logan and Durik as Lady Damhán announced them.
Durik bowed, and Logan hurried to do likewise – clearly the rogue had already worked out who he was being addressed to.
“The Baroness Adelynn,” Lady Damhán declared.
“Welcome to my halls once again, Pathfinder Durik,” the baroness said. Her voice was clear and firm. Like Damhán’s, it seemed well accustomed to command. Durik merely nodded.
“And a new welcome to you, Logan Lashley of Sixspan Hall,” Adelynn continued. “I understand you have only recently arrived in Highmont? I hope the town and the citadel are both to your liking?”
“A fine break from the travails of the western baronies, my lady,” Logan said, offering another bow, this time accompanied by a smile. “I am at your service.”
“Then I count myself fortunate indeed,” Adelynn said. “No doubt you are weary from your travels. Food and lodgings will be provided for you immediately.”
“And they will both be very welcome,” Logan said. “Though, if I may, I crave to speak of more pressing matters first.”
“You refer to the reason for your being here,” Adelynn said. “Is it true you came all this way on just a few words from the pathfinder?”
“A few words from a trusted friend,” Logan said. “I would travel beyond the Sea of Smoke for Durik. We have saved each another’s lives on more occasions than I could count.”
Durik tried not to roll his eyes and set about mentally totaling up how often he’d been saved by Logan. Once. Twice if he counted the incident with the Uthuk Y’llan in the Thalian Glades. Logan was still speaking.
“I won’t deny it though, my lady, the question of just what secretive summons brought me here has been weighing heavily on my mind.”
Adelynn nodded. “If you do not yet know what it is then I can only assume the rumors have yet to reach west of the Shadow Peaks,” she said. “That, at least, is a comfort to me.”
“The rumors, my lady?”
Adelynn glanced at Lady Damhán, then spoke once more to Logan and Durik.
“Come with me.” She turned, and, accompanied by the fat, red-clad man, strode out onto the balcony. Durik, Logan and Damhán followed, Durik having to duck through the blue drapes. He realized immediately that the space beyond was less of a balcony, and more of an eyrie.
A large, semi-circular stone platform jutted from the upper north face of Highmont keep, soaring out over the crag the tower was perched upon. Below, the streets of the town sloped away, row after row of rooftops and smoking chimney stacks interspersed with the grander building of the golden dome of the Temple of Kellos. They all gave way in turn to the outer wall, where banners of blue and golden silk fluttered, and beyond it, to the green and brown patchwork quilt of fields and forests that formed central Forthyn. In the far distance, hazed to a dark smudge, stood the southern edge of Blind Muir Forest.
The wind hit the group as they stepped out, snatching at cloaks and hair and ruffling Baroness Adelynn’s feather mantle. Only Durik didn’t draw his pelt closer, inhaling deeply as he savored the chill. Up here the air was clear and free – Durik hated the stale interior of any building, hated anything that confined him and kept him from the wilderness he called home. The two weeks he’d spent waiting for Logan had been difficult, but up here he could almost taste the freedom.
“You know what this space is for?” Adelynn asked Logan.
“I could guess, my lady,” he replied. “It has been many years since I last saw the creature your barony is famed for.”
“I suspect that wait will end today,” the baroness said, stepping to the edge of the platform. Durik noticed there were things scattered across the stone underfoot – splinters of broken bone. He knelt and picked one up, examining it. A slender rabbit rib, gouged by claws. Or, more accurately, talons.
“You recognize the marks, pathfinder?” Durik realized Adelynn was addressing him. He simply nodded, placing the bone back down and straightening up.
The group stood in silence for a while. Logan caught Durik’s eye, clearly trying to prompt him into asking the baroness just how long they would have to stand out in the biting wind. Durik let him wait. It was clear the baroness wanted to make an impression – she wouldn’t have dissolved a session with the town’s wealthiest burgesses otherwise. Besides, prying ears were plentiful in any barony capital. Anything they said here belonged only to the wind.
After a while he caught a cry on the wind. He looked up. The sound had been too distant for the others to hear but Durik, attuned to the sounds of the wild by decades of tracking, recognized it instantly.
A second cry pierced the autumn wind. This time the others heard it. Logan started to look apprehensive and edged back to where Damhán and the fat man were standing by the council chamber entrance. Durik noticed that Adelynn was smiling, though the expression was a sad one.
A shape, larger than a man, darted around the east face of the keep, razor-fast. Durik heard Logan give out a little yelp of shock as it swooped down towards the balcony. At the last instant it splayed and beat its great wings, the air whipping at Durik’s pelts and snatching at the baroness’s skirts. The cold sunlight gleamed brilliantly from the golden feathers of the great creature as it alighted on the balcony’s edge, its talons latching onto the scarred stone.
“By the glory of Kellos,” Logan stammered, cringing back from the avian beast. It resembled a giant golden eagle, its gaze equal parts haughty and curious as it twitched from Durik to Logan. It was a roc, and Durik knew that, despite the fact that it was as large as he was, it was still only an adolescent.
The creature cried out once more, the ear-aching sound carrying out over Highmont. Baroness Adelynn moved to its side and reached up, running her fingers through the thick plumage around its neck.
“Her name is Amara,” Adelynn said, looking back at Durik and Logan. “After my grandmother. She is almost fully grown now. In two weeks, maybe three, she will go to the eyries amidst the Howling Giant Hills, and there find a mate. Gerold, come.”
The last words she directed at the fat man, who advanced with obvious unease. Durik realized that Amara had something clutched in her talons – a ragged carcass, slowly oozing blood out over the balcony’s edge. Judging by the strands of matted wool caught in the roc’s lower feathers, the remains belonged to a sheep.
Gerold stooped with some difficulty before the great avian and then, after glancing up as though afraid she was going to decapitate him with a swipe of her beak, began to examine the sheep’s remains.
“The blood makes it difficult to say,” he muttered, red-faced from the effort of straining forward without getting too close to the roc. Adelynn looked unimpressed, so he dared lean a little nearer. “The wool appears to be blue-dyed, my lady.”
“Whose herds are blue-dyed?” Adelynn asked.
“Alderman Dalin’s, I believe,” Damhán
answered before Gerold could speak. Throughout the exchange Amara had remained perfectly still, ignoring Gerold. It was looking unblinkingly at Durik. He returned the creature’s gaze steadily, then offered a slight nod. Amara clacked her beak, making Gerold rise sharply and retreat.
“Make a note, Gerold,” Adelynn ordered him. “The next livestock reimbursement is to go to Alderman Dalin. Twenty crowns and six ewes, not too old. You may use the citadel’s own stock. Be sure the expenditure is fully accounted for, or I will have the burgesses complaining to me again about the misappropriation of the town’s market taxes.”
“Yes, my lady,” Gerold said with a bow. Adelynn patted the roc again.
“Amara, feast,” she said.
Durik watched as the roc deposited the sheep’s remains on the stone beneath her and snatched it up again in her beak. Throwing her head back, she began to gulp down the carcass whole. Adelynn stepped away from her as she did so, drawing Durik’s and Logan’s eyes.
“Since I became baroness, I have helped to raise eight rocs from hatchlings to maturity, continuing the work my family has performed for centuries,” she said. “The roc is a sacred creature in Forthyn. They are our friends and our protectors. Those eight hatchlings are like children to me. Do you have any children, Logan Lashley?”
“Probably a few I don’t know about,” Logan said, clearly still preoccupied by the sight of the roc hacking down its lunch right behind the baroness.
“To lose a child is the cruelest blow a mother can suffer,” Adelynn continued. “And I have lately had the misfortune to feel that pain. My child has been stolen away from me.”
“Someone has taken one of the rocs?” Logan asked. Durik caught his eye and shook his head. Adelynn’s expression was almost unreadable, but Durik could sense a deep-seated, tightly controlled grief as she spoke.
“A roc, dear though they are, I might hope to replace. But not this child. I speak of my own daughter, Master Lashley. My only daughter, Kathryn, heiress to the Barony of Forthyn.”
The Doom of Fallowhearth Page 3