The Road To Vanador

by Terry Mancour

  “Your friend lives here?” Dad asked, with a incredulous smirk, as we rode up the way. “That’s no proper manor – that place is huge! And as tacky as a forty-year old whore!”

  “Don’t say that to Astyral,” I cautioned. “I don’t know if he’d be insulted or pleased. Or both. Gilmorans are . . . odd.”

  “It was a country home to the baron,” Astyral explained, an hour later, after he and a battalion of servants welcomed us to Shariseen, brought us inside to his private chamber, and plied us with rich mulled wine to keep us from the chill. “Hunting and fishing, mostly; there’s a big wood to the northeast that’s just thick with deer and boar, streams full of trout, and meadows perfect for hawking. And a series of cozy little cottages where the baron kept his mistresses,” he added. “Thus, there wasn’t much for the scrugs to take, and there weren’t many people here to begin with. But the architecture is lovely,” he sighed.

  “It’s . . . certainly lively,” Dad said, in a rare example of tact.

  “Wait until you see my baronial castle, at Daronel,” he bragged. “I’ve spent a fortune having it remodeled and upgraded. The same architect who built Daronel built Shariseen,” he confided. “It will be incredible, after I’m done with it.” He frowned. “You don’t have a castle in the Wilderlands yet, do you, Min?”

  “I’ll have to build one,” I admitted. “More than one, most likely. There are a few baronial castles left, but they’re inadequate. Thankfully Carmella has been surveying, plotting and planning. I’m sure she’ll have some recommendations for me. I hope you’ll visit Vanador often,” I added.

  “I’m certain of it,” he assured, as he poured us more wine. “Barrowbell and Lion are boring. Vorone is where the fun is, these days, and I’m anticipating Vanador to be quite interesting, once the Spellmonger takes a hand. Besides, my gallant Tudrymen would miss me, if I was too long absent,” he added, affectionately. “With the Ways, I can enjoy lunch in Vanador and still have supper at home in Losara. If there is any lunch worth having, in Vanador. The last time I looked it was a lonely, muddy patch under a rock.”

  “Carmella and Gareth have been working on improvements all winter. She built me a hall there, already. And once I start attracting magi to Vanador, I expect things will develop even faster than they did at Sevendor.”

  “Well, you’re certainly better funded, now,” he agreed. “And it will be fun to watch. More fun than sorting out who still owns what in Losara and Tantonel. And who should be in charge of what.”

  “I have a fair amount of that myself ahead of me in Vanador,” I reminded him. “There are still a few Wilderlords holding on, up there. Not all of them went south into the Wilderlaw. There aren’t just vacant estates, there are entire provinces that have been depopulated back to a few villages. I have to find competent lords to re-establish everything.”

  “Yes, but you’re largely creating from scratch,” Astyral countered. “I’m contending with two centuries of local custom and law, dozens of families with missing heirs and competing claims to estates that are falling into ruin from neglect, if they weren’t ruined already. I’ve had to call a truce on two different dynastic feuds, lest my baronial meetings descend into dueling. Everyone sees opportunity as much as disaster in the invasion.”

  “Whereas I just have to return a land that was already marginal to begin with into a functioning state before the goblins destroy it,” I offered.

  “I’d prefer goblins, to some of these aristocrats,” Astyral sneered. “They aren’t going to be happy with some of the changes I’m going to make. Goblins have more reasonable positions on most matters.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, next time I’m in the field against them,” I chuckled, holding out my glass for a third cup. Astyral keeps a notoriously good wine cellar, and whatever spices he’d added to the hot vintage complimented the flavor perfectly. He’s annoyingly adept at things like that.

  “You do realize that the two of you are speaking of ruling like you’re a couple of plowmen arguing over whose fields are rockier,” Dad pointed out.

  “How did you expect the nobility to talk shop?” I asked. “Every man’s job is the same, at a certain level. Being a baron isn’t all dressing for court and hawking parties. A baker and a baron have the same basic issues: people, resources, and superiors who screw around with your people and resources. Why shouldn’t we get to complain about the challenges of our position?”

  “Because you’re arse is sitting on a chair worth more than most cottages, you’re drinking a cup of wine worth a meal at a good inn, in a manor hall that’s as close to a palace as I’ve ever seen,” Dad retorted. “What do you have to complain about?”

  “Wealth does not, alas, reduce a man’s worries, but expands them,” Astyral lamented. “You are not wrong, Goodman – and I envy you your perspective. And I can appreciate it,” he added. “Spending five years as a military governor in a war zone shows you the very worst that humanity can suffer. When one is worried about your next meal – or even your next day’s existence – such issues are intellectual fantasies.

  “However, once the basic needs of food, shelter, family and security are met, they do come to the fore, in one way or another,” our host continued, philosophically. “Most men simply want . . . better, in life. If their immediate needs are fulfilled, they have no difficulty finding new worries that seem just as important. For example,” he said, sizing up my father, “you seem to be a good professional man who toils for a living,” he guessed. “Indeed, Min goes on and on about your admirable dedication to your vocation and your mastery of it.”

  “You do?” he asked me, surprised.

  “I do?” I asked Astyral, surprised.

  “Constantly,” he agreed, rolling his eyes. “You’ve mentioned your honest, hard-working father back in Talry-on-Burine so much that it’s become a bit of a jest, amongst your closest friends. We mean no ill by it – we love you dearly – but we understand it as a loyalty to the values of your class, as much as it is filial affection. My point in bringing it up, my friend, is to invite a comparison of scale.

  “If someone was to hand you a fortune, enough for you to live in peace and security for the rest of your life . . . would you be content?” Astyral proposed. “All of your food, your home, everything is taken care of. Do your worries therefore evaporate?”

  “Of course not,” Dad agreed, gruffly. “No man with daughters is free from worry. Your point?”

  “You just made it,” Astyral said, with an unsarcastic bow. “Every man has concerns, Goodman. Wealth and position merely change the scope and scale of those worries. As professions go, Minalan and I are charged with the administration of territory – in Min’s case, more territory than any magelord has held since the Magocracy’s fall. If it would please you to see us discuss these concerns over weak ale, squatting on rude wooden stools in a hovel, we could arrange that. But how would that improve things? You may take issue with the chair, the wine, and the manor hall, but the vintner, carpenter, and furniture maker see this ostentatious wealth as their own profit.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Dad agreed, defensively. “I charge more for festival breads, and a bit more for pastries for the castle. Adds a bit of coin and a touch of class to the trade,” he admitted. “It’s just . . . to hear rich men bemoan their problems while they sit in luxury pains a working man.”

  Our host chuckled. “Just as seeing peasants relax and enjoy themselves irritates some of my duller relatives,” he nodded. “It’s appalling, to hear them ride by a festival and sneer at honest men enjoying a day off work, as if they had no better purpose than toil. Yet that is the attitude they hold. In my experience, every class holds their prejudices against the others, whether it’s legitimate or not. The artisans sneer at the peasantry, who resent the artisans for their wealth even as the nobility looks down on them both. The clergy have their own prejudices, as do the magi. I find wisdom in not holding it against anyone, save when it impedes discussion.”
/>   “A fair point,” Dad grunted. “But when the world seems to conspire against you, it can make a man . . . mean.”

  “Another human universal,” Astyral said, raising his glass in a toast. “One that infects princes as much as peasants. Yet without resistance from the world, would what we strive for have meaning? A discussion for another time . . . I think supper is ready,” he said, as a silver bell tolled a single note from somewhere.

  Astyral included a few of his men in the discussions at dinner, using the opportunity to continue to boast about his wine cellar and give his talented cook a reason to show off. They were a mixture of local magi he’d hired for his staff and warmagi from Tudry he’d recruited for his new position. He was following my example in Sevendor of installing warmagi among his vassals, or making them his vassals, to help take control of two baronies.

  They were good men, too, a credit to Astyral’s eye for talent. We spent hours discussing the challenges they faced in restoring the estates, roads, and towns of northern Gilmora, and I learned a lot. While the Duchy had offered scant help, save in the forgiveness of tribute for two years, the local barons and counts were starting to provide support for the restoration effort. Everyone understood that the riches of Gilmora were vested in cotton, and getting the trade re-established was the common priority.

  From there, the warmagi launched into a lively debate about what kind of government the Magelaw would have. By that point we were deep into Astyral’s wine selections, and the proposals got increasingly bold and scandalous.

  But there were some good ideas that arose from that evening, as fuzzy as the details are in my memory. Astyral’s men were intelligent, educated wizards who had fought and worked under the old system and the new, and they had a lot of insight into the problem of incorporating magic – and magi – into the larger society in a way which would benefit them both. One of the advantages of consorting with wizards is that they tend to be learned men and women with a better understanding about things like scale, scope, iteration, conjunction, and all of the other abstract concepts that continuously guide our lives, whether we understand them or not.

  Dad didn’t, but I neither pitied or envied him, I realized that night. He was intelligent enough that he could have pursued a more learned profession, had his stars moved in those courses. If he’d manifested rajira, I could easily conceive of him as a competent mage. But I didn’t feel compelled to lecture him on the nature of the universe, as seen through magic and science, history and art. He might be entertained by them, briefly, for novelties sake, but the fact was that my father the baker just didn’t need to know those things in order to happily pursue his life. The wisdom he’d cultivated as a father, husband, and businessman was sufficient.

  We spent a full day at Shariseen Estate. Dad rested up a bit from the road and I spoke at length with Astyral. He was surprisingly adept at both organization and political matters, and he had a lot of excellent advice about the great task ahead of me. I found he helped me plan almost as well as Pentandra did. With her involved in the challenges of both Enultramar and new motherhood, I felt compelled to handle minor matters – like establishing a functioning state in the ruins of the Wilderlands. Astyral did the job handily.

  “Much will shake out of its own accord,” he assured me, after dinner the second evening, as we smoked and sipped spirits around a fireplace. “With Terleman running your army, Mavone running your military intelligence, and Sandoval responsible for building an army, you can be confident that you will be defended. Cormoran is puttering around the iron mines there. Carmella is attacking the challenge of building your town like a child playing in a sandpit. That young man Gareth is remarkably adept at civil administration –”

  “He essentially ran much of Sevendor Town, before he left,” I conceded. “If anyone can make a city out of a refugee camp, it will be him.”

  “My point,” Astyral nodded. “You already have good people in place. Hells, even Thinradel has a house there, now. Add a little gold, a little magic, and the rest will unfold of its own accord.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I asked, after a thoughtful pause.

  “Ishi’s tits, no,” he said, instantly. “It’s going to be a hellish mess. But you’ll muddle through. I’ll help,” he offered. “More, I’ll visit, and lend my class and culture to the experiment.”

  “Won’t you be busy here in Losara?”

  “With the Ways, I can be busy in two places, now,” he reminded me. “If I’m going to restore Losara and Tantonel to their glory, I’m going to need help. The local counts are not particularly inclined to cooperate,” he confided. “I’ve already run into problems of supply from southern Gilmora, as my politics are out-of-favor, at the moment. The Castali faction is in control, and they want to remind us Alshari-favoring nobles of our place. The Count of Nion has made a name for himself driving the mercenaries out of Gilmora. He’s in the ascendency.”

  “I remember him from the Curia,” I recalled. “Bit of an ass.”

  “He’s entirely an ass,” Astyral corrected. “And he’s one of Tavard’s biggest supporters in Gilmora, a member of the ducal court. Naturally, he’s rallying the Castali faction and suppressing the Alshari faction . . . which includes me, as Anguin’s vassal. So my shipments are getting delayed, and some merchants won’t deal with me,” he lamented. “I’ll need an alternate source of supply, if this persists. I’m counting on Vanador being one. Once you get it built,” he added. “Do hurry up with that.”

  “Consider it done,” I chuckled. “Give me a year, I’ll build a city.”

  “You know, Min,” Astyral said, thoughtfully, “any other man who said that, I’d be skeptical. You might actually pull it off.”

  Part Five

  A Truly Divine Dinner

  From Losara, things started to get rough on the road.

  The weather returned to its normal winter bluster, adding fresh snow and ice to the ground and making our travel more treacherous. After we passed through the troubled, half-empty shell of the town of Murai, the Cotton Road turned into a tenuous path through the rugged country commonly known as Alshari Gilmora.

  It was unlike the broad, flat cotton fields we’d passed between Barrowbell and Murai. There were still cotton fields, I knew, but they were carefully planted in the bottomlands between rolling ridges, not stretching from horizon to horizon. There were more woods than fields, now, and the villages we saw were decidedly smaller and more spread out. There started to be more smallholders, and the towers and castles we saw in the distance were more robust than the dainty fortifications of Castali Gilmora.

  Alshari Gilmora is the margin of the province, what the Dukes of Alshar managed to hang on to after the great rebellion that allowed Castal to take control. It was the tough outer crust of the Gilmoran pie of richness, sharing a culture and common roots but with out the ability to produce cotton in the same abundance . . . and, therefore, only of marginal interest to the Castali dukes. After that rebellion, many loyal Gilmorans had relocated to their lands and estates of Alshari Gilmora, rather than live under the Rose and Sword.

  It had been a hotbed of angry resistance, during the early years. Even now the region had a reputation for stubborn loyalty to their far-away duke and a pronounced antipathy for the Castali. They generally viewed the current situation as a foreign occupation. As just about every pro-Alshari noble house in northern Gilmora had kin or cadet branches in Alshari Gilmora, they also had a pool of mercenaries and auxiliaries they employed in their feuds.

  The invasion had done Alshari Gilmora no favors. Most of the settlements along the Cotton Road had been razed by the gurvani, and it was said that there were still hidden enclaves of gurvani in caverns and bunkers who would steal out at night to raid. The forests on the ridgetops were infamous for harboring bandits and rebels who preyed on the richer lands to the south. Then there was the perpetual threat of raids from the fearsome Pearwoods clans to the north. And in the case of any war between the du
chies, Alshari Gilmora would be a major staging ground and target for attack.

  That encouraged everyone in the region to be a bit paranoid . . . and heavily armed.

  Grand estates were infrequent, compared to the fortified manors of freeholders and independent-minded lords. There was still the Gilmoran obsession to ostentation abundantly apparent, as we passed by mere cottages that were adorned with gilded pillars and elaborate balconies, and common vegetable gardens were laid out with the precision and care usually reserved for the plantations of the southern valleys. Even the privies were decorated as gaily as palaces.

  In the summertime, it’s a pretty, green country, a gentle prelude to the rugged landscapes of the Wilderlands. The people have the courtesy and graciousness that Gilmorans were famous for, even when they were cutting your throat or robbing your wagon. I’d done a few small jobs in the region, back when I was a mercenary. In the summer. In winter, it was a bleak, barren land that inspired a sense of unease and paranoia among native and visitor alike.

  We were on our second day slowly pressing on, the road rising and falling through countless ridges and valleys. It twisted and turned around hilltops and across numerous streams by bridge and ford. Every curve and hill could conceal just about anything on the other side: bandit king, feuding petty lord, or murderous band of goblins, Alshari Gilmora was a dreadfully interesting place. Or an interesting dreadful place, depending on your perspective.

  The second day out was the worst, as the weather warmed the slightest bit and some fickle weather goddess decided to send us miserable freezing rain, instead of pretty snow, with a blast of wintery wind to make things fun. Dad looked more and more grim as we went, and our conversation dried up even as our cloaks became caked with ice.

  We weren’t suffering, understand – it was just unpleasant. I had enough magic to keep the worst of the storm from blasting us, and keep the horses pulling.

  Worse, our pace was cut dramatically, as visibility declined and the road became icy. My spells kept the team from hurting themselves, but nothing could have encouraged them to pull faster, their faces to the wind.