“He wants to speak with you, before we leave,” Afra said. “I will be in the stable readying the animals. Be swift if you can, we have already spent more light than I would wish.”
In a moment, Dirk was alone in the common room except for Thicket. He glanced at the little beast, but the cat just yawned, and curled up in the chair Bea had vacated. Dirk scratched the cat behind the ears, and smoothed his thumb across his forehead. Thicket gave a grunting purr of acknowledgment, and closed his eyes.
“There are no worries in the life of a cat,” Dirk said, remembering a favorite saying of his grandmother’s. Dirk smiled a little, then stood, and made his way to Caddell's room.
The room was small, and nearly bare. There was a bed, a side table, a chair, and a small stack of clothes on a shelf. The same tiles that covered the common room made up the floor, and they were filled with the same strange sights of life in the tiny, fantastical city. Caddell sat in his chair, leaning on his stick. He raised his head, and stared at Dirk. He was no more handsome now than he'd ever been, but his face was slack, and empty. He looked like a man who had given up the urge to run, and was simply waiting for his fate to come devour him.
“I would beg a favor of you,” Caddell said, his voice all but toneless.
“If it is within my power, I will grant it,” Dirk said.
“Keep her safe,” Caddell said. “Come flood or blood, keep her safe, and bring her back to me if this is where she wants to come when this business is put to rest.”
Dirk nodded. After a moment he said, “I have a price to ask for such a favor.”
Caddell held out his right hand, his palm turned up. “Name your price, and I will pay it with a happy heart.”
Dirk nodded. “Tell me how you found the end of the black road.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Caddell's mouth. He turned to the small bedside table, withdrew a sparker, and lit a half-melted candle stub. He held the candle out to Dirk, and pointed at the head of the bed.
“Look you beneath,” the innkeep said.
Dirk gripped the headboard, and pulled. The bed shuddered and slid over the tiles. He took the candle, knelt, and looked at where Caddell had pointed. Beneath the bed, under the place where the innkeep slept, was a strange scene. Painted on one of the tiles was a colossal city gate, guarded by men in steel helms and colorful cloaks. Huge carts drawn by strange beasts with fanged muzzles and curling horns passed side-by-side beneath the gate, and flags bearing symbols Dirk had never seen stirred in a frozen breeze. For a moment, Dirk didn't see the significance. Then his eyes traced the shape of the gate. It was a massive archway of white stone. Beneath the arch was a road of black stone, shiny and slick even in miniature. He looked up at Caddell. The innkeep nodded his head.
“I found it when Bea was sick, and I had to handle her chores,” Caddell said. “All I could think about was finding Afra, and I knew that if I could find that road Lanissara had led them to, then I could find her. When I realized the map had been right here the whole time, I knew what I had to do. So I followed that road until it reached the end.”
“And where is the end?” Dirk asked.
Caddell coughed, and wiped his mouth. He took a long, slow breath, and clenched his jaw as he let it back out again. “The black temple stands before the fire. It was right in front of my eyes the whole time, and I never saw it. Now it is all I can do to look away from it.”
Dirk glanced toward the far wall, and took a moment to get his bearings. Then he nodded, and stood. He snuffed the candle between his thumb and forefinger, and set it on the side table. Dirk laid his left hand on Caddell's shoulder, and squeezed gently.
“She will come back,” he said. “My oath on that.”
“You do not trust her,” Caddell said to Dirk's back.
“I trust she will do what is best for her kin,” Dirk said. “It is a feeling she and I share.”
“May fortune give you greater favor than she gave me,” Caddell said.
Dirk nodded, but said nothing else. He left Caddell's room without closing the door. Bea met him at the bar, and pressed a cloth parcel into his hands. It was tightly packed, and surprisingly heavy for how small it was.
“That should see you a day or three, if you make it spare,” Bea said. She glanced toward the barn door, then leaned closer to Dirk. “Guard your heart.”
“Rest your mind,” Dirk said. “I have a plan.”
“My cousin had a plan when he followed after that girl,” Bea said. “You can see with your own eyes the sort of stead it stood him in.”
“I am not Caddell,” Dirk replied.
Bea frowned, an expression that was too at home on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. She chewed whatever she'd been going to say, then nodded. She cupped both sides of Dirk's face, and pulled him into a kiss. It was sweet, graceless, and all too brief. When Dirk pulled back, Bea's cheeks were flushed, and her lips had darkened to a deep shade of rose. She licked them, and swallowed.
“Do not be kind to them,” Bea said. “I do not want to see a single fresh wound on you when you return.”
Dirk smiled, cupped the back of Bea's neck with his good hand, and gave her a kiss of his own. Before she could wrap her arms around him, though, he was gone, stepping into the barn and closing the door at his back.
The air in the barn was crisp, and cool. Afra had two white mules bridled, with blankets laid across their backs. She was brushing the animals, speaking softly in her own tongue. Sunset stuck her head out when she heard Dirk, and snorted a question at him. He patted her muzzle. She nuzzled at the parcel beneath his arm, but Dirk pulled it out of her reach.
“Your breakfast grows along the trail,” he said. “And besides, you will be staying here.”
Dirk gave the mules a wide berth, circling round till he stood before them. One was gelded, the other was a female, and neither gave him more than a roll of their eyes and the twitch of an ear. Afra cupped the female's muzzle, and scratched her gently.
“This is Crispa,” she said. “That is Masan. He is a gentle beast, but near deaf on his right side. Always mount from the left, else he will startle.”
Dirk held out his palm to Masan. The mule grunted, and pushed its muzzle into Dirk's palm. It snuffled at him, and after a moment seemed satisfied. Afra slipped the brush back onto the rack on the wall, plucked two carrots from a bin, and handed one to Dirk. She fed hers to Crispa, and Dirk offered his to Masan. Both beasts took the treats enthusiastically, and Afra smiled as she rubbed her mule between the ears.
“You have made a friend for the day, if not for life,” she said, hoisting herself onto Crispa's back.
“We shall see,” Dirk said. He reached into the drawer, and took out another carrot. Sunset pricked up her ears, and took it with great pleasure. Dirk patted her neck as she chewed. “Where is the cloak?”
“Just here,” Afra said, plucking it down off a hook, and handing it to Dirk. Dirk slid it around his shoulders, and clasped it. A musky scent clung to the cloak, crawling up Dirk's nostrils; dirt and sweat fermenting in the woolen weave. He pushed the hood away from his face, coughed, and spat.
“I tried to air it,” Afra said, a note of apology in her voice as she picked up a leather satchel and slid it over her shoulder. “But there is only so much air and sun can do when faced with a stink like Daerun's.”
“It will serve,” Dirk said. “When the night comes, that is all that matters.”
He opened the barn door, and led Masan out. He waited until Afra had joined him, then closed the door, and mounted. Masan brayed, and shifted beneath him. Afra smiled, clucked her tongue, and turned Crispa's head to the north. The street was deserted, except for a single old man, and two dogs. The dogs watched them in silence. The old man coughed, hacked, and spat a glob of phlegm onto the road. The only other sounds were the clop of the animals' hooves, and the twitch of curtains as the townsfolk tried to see without being seen.
As soon as they passed the
low gate marking the end of the town proper, the green swallowed up any remaining signs of civilization. The hills rolled away from them in waves, crested with shaggy sweet grass and timothy. The wind made the countryside ripple and whisper, as shadows leaped and danced in a way that was nearly hypnotic. Trees loomed over ax-cut ravines, and small streams flashed along half-hidden banks. The water sparkled, catching the light before vanishing into the shallows again. Birds flitted from one canopy to another, but there were fewer of them now than there had been. Dirk caught glimpses of a dozen different groundlings stalking and skulking through the underbrush. He saw sign and spoor of many more. Before they'd covered a single mile, the only signs that Barrow Fields still existed were the plumes of smoke lingering in the air behind them.
The trail narrowed as they rode, becoming more a rutted track instead of anything as grand as a highway. They passed several hunter's blinds, their old boards draped in faded garland to hide the sight and smell of men from their prey. None showed signs of recent use. An old rope swung from a high tree branch, a testament to summer games gone by. A carved wooden sign was slung from an oak branch several miles down the road. It declared Curren Farm, and parts unknown, lay down a branching path to the west. The words were burned into the wood instead of carved, but it took Dirk several tries to reconcile the symbols he saw with the meaning they intended. Afra rode past it without slowing, heading due north. Dirk followed, clucking his tongue for Masan.
An hour after they'd left Barrow Fields behind, Dirk saw the sentinel stone the folk in town had spoken of. It flanked the road, erupting from the ground like an upraised, granite finger that was taller than a man ahorse. Wind and rain had worn the tip to a blunted point, and Dirk could read the passage of the sun in the patterns of light and dark etched across the rock's face. As he drew closer, though, Dirk saw the stone had cracked. Jagged lines ran over its entire face, as if it had been struck dead center by a giant's hammer. Hunks of stone had fallen to the ground, scorched as if thunderstruck. A fresh hole yawned in the stone's western face, like a great, toothless maw. Around the mouth, just barely visible, Dirk could see the arch of thick, red lines scrawled across the stone. It was like a doorway drawn in bloody thorns.
“What happened here?” he asked as they passed.
“Lanissara bound one of the Shanasaa to this place to watch the road, and keep the border,” Afra said. “She told Daerun and Gerd the words to speak, and the offerings to make, to command it. They built a fire, gutted a hare, and shed blood from their own wrists. They burnt your hair, and when they finished the invocation, the fire went out.”
Afra shuddered, looking away from the stone and making a warding gesture over her bowed head. The mules showed no such trepidation as they passed, stepping over the humped road and broken stones. Dirk sniffed, and returned his gaze to the hills all around them.
“Then what happened?” he asked.
“Hours passed,” Afra said. “It was near to midnight when a wind howled overhead, and the stone broke. The blood they had shed bubbled and boiled, and the stone burned hot. Pieces fell, sparking small fires in the damp grass. Daerun was scared as I have never seen before. Gerd was the one who said they had to go see what had happened. He told me to wait for them here, and they rode off to see what had become of the spirit. I waited for a time, then followed. The night was dark, with a loud wind, and they never so much as turned to look behind.”
Dirk nodded thoughtfully, and flexed his injured hand. He glanced over his shoulder, but all that waited behind him was silence and ruin. He touched the hilt of his dagger with his left hand, and turned his gaze forward again. That was where the next challenge lay.
Chapter Eighteen
Beyond the sentinel stone, the land grew wilder still. The road was still in evidence, but it was disused, with fresh grass filling the wagon ruts of untold years. There were no mile markers, and no lean-to shelters left by one traveler for another's use. There were occasional game trails, but nothing that looked as if it had been used by hunters who went on fewer than four legs. Streams ran swiftly in banks that lacked the straight lines of human meddling, and none of the flora looked like it had been cut or shaped in many a year. It was the smell more than anything else that told Dirk they had truly left civilization behind. It was a green scent, thick with layers of wildflowers, saw grass, and sun-soaked leaves atop a bed of mulchy, black earth.
Afra led the way along barely-glimpsed paths, stopping from time to time to slide down from Crispa's back to examine a cut near the base of a tree, or to check her bearings from a stick that had been placed in recently cleared ground. As they rode, Dirk tried to picture the floor of the Sheltered City. The boulevards filled with exotic beasts, and the balconies packed with strange, black-clad people; as if the whole city was reveling and mourning simultaneously. He traced their path through his mind, imagining what the land they passed through would look like were it cleared, paved, and then filled with tall statues and intricate fountains. He could almost hear the ghosts of that painted world as he tried to see them through the hills and trees. Afra kept a steady pace, but they had crossed no more than half the common room by Dirk's estimation by the time the light began to fade.
“Can you find your way in the night?” Dirk asked, keeping his voice low.
“No,” Afra said. “There is a place to camp nearby. It should shelter us till dawn with little trouble.”
Dirk clenched his jaw, and rubbed at the place where his bandages had begun to chafe. He felt the ache behind his eyes, and the grinding in his neck. He glanced at the sky, and saw a tiny sliver of moon. It glinted like a harvest sickle, thin and sharp. He nodded, more to himself than to Afra.
“Well enough,” Dirk said. “Lead on.”
Crispa picked her way among the tangles, stepping over downed limbs and swishing through high grass. Both the mule and her rider were little more than dirty ghosts in the gloom, so Dirk simply let Masan have his head. The mule followed in Crispa's footsteps, kicking the occasional stone, but otherwise keeping firm footing. A half mile or so later, Afra pulled back on the reins, and slid down from her mule. She fumbled in the foliage, and pulled back a downed branch to reveal a yawning gap between two bushes.
“Hold the beasts here,” she said as Dirk got back onto his own two feet. “I will light the fire.”
Dirk took the reins, and held the mules while Afra reached into her satchel. She took out a striker and a candle, holding the little light high as she peered inside. There was a scorched pit filled with broken branches, and sprinkled with brown needles. Next to the fire pit sat a large rock, and a charred stick leaned against a nearby tree trunk. Several rabbit bones were scattered through the grass, cracked open and sucked dry. Afra ducked beneath the low-hanging boughs, and knelt before the pit. She ran her candle along the edge, and lit a dry, dead leaf. She tucked it into the pit, and within a few minutes the little windbreak was filled with light, and warmth. Dirk led Crispa in, then Masan. Both mules walked right to a cleared section of grass, and laid down. Nearby, a crude drinking trough hung between two trees. Masan slurped at the water in it, though Crispa seemed more interested in rest than water. Dirk pulled the broken branch back over the entrance, settling the thick end into a notch that held it in place.
“I laid a fresh fire before we left,” Afra said, putting her back against the stone. “No matter how things turned out, I did not want to huddle in the dark and the cold when I returned this way.”
“Wise of you,” Dirk said, slipping the dirty cloak off his shoulders, and hanging it from a branch. He sank onto the soft grass, and sat cross-legged. Out of the wind, the cold wasn't so bad. He opened the sack Bea had given him, taking out some bread, hard cheese, and trail jerky. He put a piece of the dried meat between his cheek and gum, letting it soften while he enjoyed the smoky flavor. He tore the bread into manageable hunks, and handed one to Afra. She took it uncertainly as Dirk drew his knife, and sliced the cheese. There was a slight tremor in his right hand, but h
is blade never hesitated.
“Do your wounds pain you?” Afra asked.
“They are wounds,” Dirk said, offering Afra several slices of the cheese. “It is their nature to give pain.”
Afra took the cheese, nibbling at the pieces slowly. Dirk chewed the jerky, grinding it between his back teeth. It was salty, and it made his tongue pucker, but it wasn't long before it softened enough for him to chew it properly. A night breeze clawed at the circle of trees, and whistled through the small gaps in the bushes. Afra added sticks to the fire, and as it climbed Dirk saw that in several places the trees had grown into each other. He frowned, tracing the lines of the trunks with his gaze.
“This place did not grow by chance,” Dirk said, swallowing the jerky and taking a bite of the cheese.
“No,” Afra said. “We call them Haff Na-gar. It means sheltering arms. There are dozens across the hills, and we use them from season to season. That way no matter where we go, we always know there is a lay-by somewhere near to hand.”
“Wise,” Dirk said. He sprinkled salt onto a hunk of the bread, and took a bite. “Tell me what lies ahead from here.”
Afra nodded. She took a stick, and began drawing in the dirt with it. The map was crude, but easy enough to make sense of. Afra spoke as she drew, tapping the point into the soil for emphasis from time to time. “This, here, is Barrow Fields. This is where we are now. This, here, is another of the Haff Na-gar. It stands near the end of the Karran Harr. It is far larger than this shelter, and it was grown to be a stable, and a comfortable place for the Vor Dak'ham to await the return of the acolytes on their pilgrimages. One or two boys wearing the white are put there for a few days at a time to watch mounts, and to scout the countryside. Whether they are there now, I cannot say.”
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