by J H G Foss
‘Oh very well,’ said Ghene giving his friend an odd look. ‘Well, do you come this way regularly?’
‘From time to time I travel the Greenway yes. It is the quickest route east to west.’
‘You do not find it dangerous?’
Mordran sighed and rubbed his hands. ‘It can be. I have my ways though.’
They sat in silence for a while.
‘Do you know anything of the city nearby?’
‘A little.’
‘Perhaps,’ continued Ghene. ‘Ah, perhaps you could settle an argument. Do you know who built it?’
Mordran considered for a moment. ‘Well, there are some that say men ruled this island many years ago, before the dragons came. When the dragons came they took the men’s cities and made them their slaves.’
‘So, ah, men then. Like Roztov?’ said the elf gesturing at his friend.
‘Much like him yes, I should imagine.’
‘Huh, looks like you win, Roz.’
‘Yes. Great,’ replied Roztov through clenched teeth.
‘If you don’t mind me asking then, how do you avoid the dragons?’ said Ghene.
‘Oh, the Chasm Dragons have no magic. They are immensely powerful, but if they cannot see you then they do not know you are there. They do not keep humans as slaves either, as the dragons of the north do. If they have ever seen me at all, I doubt they cared.’
‘Oh I see. Well we had a lot of bother with dragons south of here.’
‘Manhunters from the north, yes I can well imagine. But they avoid the Chasm. King Primus and Blavius are at war, so the Stovologard dragons avoid this area, naturally. It may seem strange to travel so close to them, but while the war is on, the Greenway is one of the safest places to be.’
‘Who are Primus and Blavius?’
‘King Primus is the ruler of Stovologard to the north. Blavius styles himself as the King of all Dragons, but in reality he rules over the Chasm only and even then only because the others find it convenient that he thinks that.’
‘So we are safe here?’ squeaked Meggelaine.
‘Sometimes the safest place for a mouse is under the cat’s belly.’
‘And they don’t care about people anyway because they don’t keep slaves?’
‘Correct, little one. The dragons of the Chasm sleep, argue and hunt only. They have little use of slaves.’
While they talked Meggelaine was preparing a plate of food for their guest. He noticed this and held up his hand. ‘There is no need, I am not hungry.’
‘Oh, but we have plenty. More than we can manage, honestly. You would be doing us a favour...’
‘Just leave it,’ whispered Roztov through his teeth.
‘No but, I mean, we will have to throw some of this... hey!’
Roztov had taken hold of her arm and was trying to communicate something to her with his eyebrows.
‘Hey, Roz!’ she whispered loudly.
‘Well,’ said Ghene, in an attempt to ignore the domestic argument that seemed to be brewing between his friends. ‘You have come from the east?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘What can you tell us of that direction? I have seen a huge spire over there.’
Mordran nodded, as he continued to rub his hands in front of the fire.
‘I would not get too close to it, if I were you. The dragons of the Spire are powerful wizards.’
‘Oh really? How close do you suppose would be dangerous?’
‘Hum,’ Mordran grunted. ‘Well, that rather depends. Are you as you appear, or do you have magic? Can you fight dragons?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. We three are druids, we can change into...’
Roztov suddenly had a loud coughing fit. Meggelaine looked at him with consternation and thumped him on the back.
‘Sorry, must be a bone,’ he said as he recovered his voice.
‘There were no bones in the food I gave you!’ glared Meggelaine.
Ghene looked back to Mordran, ‘As I was saying...’
Once more Roztov gave three loud coughs. He held up his hand then said, ‘sorry, sorry. Please, can you tell us more about the Spire?’
Mordran smiled knowingly at Roztov, and then said, ‘I know little, only what I have picked up on my travels. You will never see a Spire dragon abroad; they stick to their tower and their studies. They play no part in the politics of Tanud. It is them that shroud the island in mist and keep it hidden, or so they say.’
They talked for a while longer, but the old man seemed to have little more information to offer and even though Ghene gently pressed him, he would not reveal where he had come from or where he was going. Mordran tried to ask questions about where they had come from and what their plans were, but Roztov always interrupted the others before they could speak and gave very evasive answers.
Eventually Mordran stood, stretched his legs and said, ‘well, thank you for the warmth of your fire, I will continue on now.’
‘But surely,’ exclaimed Meggelaine. ‘Surely you will stay? It’s pitch black now.’
‘Oh don’t worry about me, little one. I have my ways. I have travelled this route many times.’
‘At least take some food. No?’
‘Thank you, but no.’
They all said their farewells and when the old man was well on his way Meggelaine turned to Roztov and thumped him on the arm.
‘Why were you acting so odd all the time, Roz?’
Roztov was rubbing his face with his hands. ‘Oh Etruna,’ he sighed in quiet prayer. ‘Save us.’
‘What’s got into you?’
‘He smelled funny.’
‘So what?’
‘All three of us are shape-shifters. We shift our shape, but never our smell. If you and Ghene change into the same bird I could still tell you apart by smell.’
‘Oh really?’ asked Meggelaine. ‘What do I smell of?’
‘Pie crust.’
‘Very funny. What about Ghene?’
‘Right now he smells like pine needles.’
‘Never mind that,’ put in Ghene. ‘What did Mordran smell of?’
‘Dragon.’
They all sat in silence for a moment while that new information sunk in.
‘You couldn’t smell it?’ asked Roztov.
‘When I’m around you all I smell is sweaty human,’ said Ghene.
‘Same,’ said Meggelaine.
‘Charming. Well, take it from me, that bloke – was a dragon.’
The next morning they edged closer to the city. They thought of it as such now, a city of dragons, something so incredible that they wondered if anyone would believe them if they made it back to Nillamandor.
Everything was new to them, they had nothing to gauge what was normal for a city of dragons. From where they perched, three tiny birds in a crack in the rocks on the other side of the chasm, they watched the comings and goings of the dragons. At lunch time they returned to their campsite and as they ate, discussed what they had seen.
‘They all seem pretty big anyway,’ said Meggelaine.
‘And in all sorts of colours, with all sorts of variations of horns and manes. I think I saw some of them wearing jewellery as well,’ said Roztov.
Ghene was breaking up twigs and feeding them to the fire as Meggelaine cooked. ‘That big red one, did you see him? He looked ancient. Was that the one we saw flying along the canyon yesterday? He seemed to spend some time talking to other dragons at the main entrance.’
‘Hey spoke to that long green thin one and the big fat brown one. So many different colours, shapes and sizes. I don’t know where to begin... Oh Blood’s Bones, I wish I had a notebook with me.’
‘I saw one covered in what looked like fur,’ put in Meggelaine as she stirred the pot. ‘Do you think it was real?’
Roztov shrugged and Ghene smiled. ‘You know, as I looked at the architecture, all those arches and columns, I wondered at what manner of people built such a place. You can see the occasional remains of staircase
s that would be of no obvious use to dragons. Despite what Mordran said, I can’t help but think I’m looking at the work of elves.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Whoever they are, we won’t find out from over here,’ muttered Roztov.
‘It would be good to take a look inside.’
Meggelaine, who was nibbling on a roasted parsnip spluttered and coughed, ‘Now wait a minute...’
‘Just a thought. There must be evidence in there as to who were the builders. I mean, could it have been Dynar?’
‘You think that this could, in fact, be Hannah?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not, but...’ Ghene mused, scratching his head. ‘It’s Han-nah by the way, not the way you say it.’
Roztov laughed. ‘How can you possibly know that? Its name is derived from a scroll that is four hundred years old, written in a dead language. Not even you lot know it.’
‘My “lot”?’ said Ghene, bristling somewhat, ‘We elves have a feeling for such things. You pronounce the second “en”.’
‘Well we humans don’t. I say “Hanna”. See?’
Meggelaine rolled her eyes and started to pass out second helpings of the meat and vegetables she had been roasting by the fire.
‘You know not of what you speak, Roztov,’ said Ghene. ‘We elves, we sons of Dynar, finding Hannah means everything to us. It would make a fractured people whole.’
‘Maybe, but with respect,’ replied Roztov, ‘your people are not Dynarians any longer. In Styke we have villages like Glonk and Rogin that are an intermix of men and elves. There are no Dynarians left.’
‘There are pure blooded settlements in your country, I know of them.’
‘Reservation areas, yes. Deep in the Tanglewood and such horrible places. The self-styled “wood elf”villages. You see men there too as well though, they don’t have a lick of elf in them. It’s more of a life-style choice than a race.’
‘Well, yes, but that’s elves living in human lands. If you want to see people like me, it’s in the Great Forest.’
‘I know,’ continued Roztov as he ate.‘I don’t mean to be rude, but how many of you are there? Ten thousand, twenty?’
‘Censuses are admittedly difficult,’ conceded Ghene.
Meggelaine was barely listening to them now. Her usual instinct was to butt into any conversation that was happening, particularly when eating was going on, but this was such a familiar old subject from her two friends that she contented herself busying around the campsite.
Roztov pulled the meat off a rotrok bone and ate it bit by bit with his fingers as he went on.
‘Not enough to build an empire on is what I’m saying. And even the Council has admitted you are a long way from what the Dynar were, even in terms of what you look like. You lot have the pointy ears alright, but according to the history books the Dynars all stood over six feet tall.
‘I acknowledge that I am short.’
‘I told you back on the Red Maiden I’d met sea elves right? Not just on the eastern seas, but on the west coast of Styke.’
‘Those are sailor’s stories; we in the Council know nothing of this.’
‘Sailor’s stories?’ laughed Roztov, ‘You’re living through one of them right now!’
‘Yes, well go on then.’
‘A ship came up the river to Timu. It was a few years ago now. They were explorers, adventurers from an island called Lalor. Sea elves. As thin lipped and as pointy eared as you could wish for. They were pretty rough and ready though, by elf standards.’
‘It is not possible that these were Nillamandorian elves just pulling your leg?’
‘Well, if they were, it was a very elaborate jest,’ shrugged Roztov.‘The cut of their clothes was different, they talked some ancient tongue between themselves. I went down to the harbour to look over their ship. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.’
‘Very well, but where? Nobody knows anything about east of Norob.’
‘They had come round the southern tip of Fiarka, imagine that. East of there is another sea of islands. We know this from other traveller’s tales. A whole other sea, it’s where Ferron gets its spice. Tuppence’s people know of it. It exists, I’m sure of it, although I admit I have not seen it with my own eyes.’
‘Marawan history has none of this.’
‘If you ask me, that’s where the Dynar went. East, not west, and they became the sea elves.’
‘No.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Roztov shrugging again. ‘One day I’ll go east and take a look.’
‘Oh, you know who went east?’ Meggelaine put in, finally deciding to join in the conversation. ‘Festos.’
‘Did he?’
‘Lilly sent him east to go spy on you-know-who if you can believe it. He’s probably...dead.’
Meggelaine looked down at her plate, realising she sounded silly.
‘Aye, well. If anyone could do it, it would be Festos. Just the right amount of savvy mixed in with his crazy. Half-elf right? It’s been years since I’ve seen him. Some wedding or something.’
‘Oh that would have been Coren’s wedding, oh did you know...’
The conversation was effectively hijacked by Meggelaine now and it moved on to her favourite subject, gossip about her friends.
After a long lunch they spent the afternoon dragon watching again then returned to the camp and spent the night. In the morning, after breakfast, Ghene got up and said, ‘I’m going to see a man about a dog. See you later.’
As Ghene walked off into the trees Meggelaine turned to Roztov and asked, ‘he’s going to pee?’
‘He doesn’t usually announce that. I think he’s going to check on Dreggen.’
They were in no hurry to go watch the dragons without him so they toasted some rolls by the fire and heated another pot of tea for a second breakfast. About an hour later the elf returned.
‘Dreggen has gone! His trail has vanished.’
‘Eaten by a dragon?’ asked Roztov.
‘Perhaps. Thanks Meg,’ said Ghene as he accepted a cup of tea. ‘There was no blood or bones though. He walked up to an open hill top and then the trail ends.’
‘Picked up by a dragon then?’
‘I think perhaps. Could he have been in league with them then, somehow?’
‘I never liked him,’ said Meggelaine with a mock shudder. ‘He was shifty, right from the beginning.’
Roztov gave her a look, but decided not to correct her. ‘Well, he’s well away from Vine Street anyway, but perhaps one of us should go back down there and take a quick look.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Ghene.
‘We’ll just do a bit more dragon watching, eh Meg?’
‘Just as long as it’s from this side of the canyon. No more diving about or thinking about going in.’
‘Very well. I’ll see you both later then,’ said Ghene as he picked up his pack. ‘Expect me this time tomorrow.’
Chapter 7
Moletown Again
Broddor was telling a story of his younger days, back when he was the leader of the Kardane Company. The sailors were there listening, in the main hall of Moletown, and Floran translated as best he could for the many people of the settlement who had drifted in to hear the tale.
‘…by then it felt like we were a long way from home. Luxor neighbours Joppa, it’s all mountains, you understand, and behind them is this place called the Moon Marshes. It’s cursed by evil magic, the sun never really goes there. It’s so high up on the plateaux that the air feels different, thinner, it felt odd breathing it, ye know? It’s colder than hell too. The whole place, it feels wrong. You can live with it, but you never lose that feeling of difference, a sense of wrongness. Like a toothache maybe, sometimes you don’t notice it, but it’s always there. The air feels oily and washed out.
Aye, and not just that, the landscape is all wrong, it’s a network of valleys and marshes, all topsy-turvy and piled up on itself, caves and tunnels, leading from one valley to the next. Some ancient race h
ad lived there at some point and that was how they got about. Going over those near vertical jagged mountains was impossible, you had to descend into the tunnels and just see where you popped up. If you think that sounds tricky to navigate, you’d be right.
Aye well anyway, they are called the Moon Marshes because it never sees the sun and because the valleys are all full of stinking freezing swamps. They are about a hundred miles wide north to south, and east to west, it’s at least five hundred, maybe even more as it descends down into the Norob Forest and no one I know has been daft enough to go that far.
No one that ever went up onto the Marshes had ever came back alive either, come to that, but the King of Joppa was at war with Julgia, and what with all his army fighting them on his border he needed people to cover his flank, if you see what I mean, and paid for mercenary companies to go up onto the Marshes and deal with what was up there.
Well, only the west part had anybody living in it, most of it was overrun with undead. The further east you went, the more undead it got. Great and terrible evil lurked in every cave, in every burnt out village and every valley. Nowhere was safe, tribes of huge white-skinned monsters camped out in the open plains and ye could hear their dark chanting come drifting across the hillsides at night as they carried out their terrible blood sacrifices. Not that there was a proper night time, mind you, or a day time, just a perpetual moonlight, the whole area, like I said, being under some dreadful curse.
Well, being a strong and independent company, we were sent deep in to the marshes on a scouting mission, well in advance of the main force.
We reached this valley via an underground tunnel, constructed by some long forgotten and I daresay ancient civilisation. Its tall and vaulted ceiling provided a welcome shelter for us from the harsh cold of the open marshes. When we had first arrived we set up a simple barricade built from tree trunks at the tunnel entrance. It made us with a good defensible point.
I was the leader then, you know, and we’d done this sort of thing before, so we had a wee sally port at one corner to allow egress and a raised step for people to look over the parapet. Despite the preparations though, we had lost a scout in the very first hour of getting there.