by J H G Foss
Ghene pointed to the space between two of the peaks on the other side of the lake. He then turned into a goshawk and flew off.
‘What do you mean, move?’ said Meggelaine when Broddor told her the plan. She gestured to Roztov. ‘Look at the state of him. He’ll fall to pieces.’
‘Well...’ said Broddor.
Meggelaine grumbled something unintelligible, stood up and said, ‘don’t bother saying it. I know what you’re thinking, Broddor.’
Meggelaine gave Roztov a long icy look. ‘The things I do for you.’ In a flash of druidic magic she then turned into a stocky pony with a rich red shaggy coat and a wild mane that covered its eyes completely, giving it a roguish look. Floran and Arrin helped Roztov onto Meggelaine’s back and in this fashion they transported him north along the shore of the mountain lake.
It was evening, the sun was setting to the west, as they reached the ridge and looked down the mountainside to the north. The view, though, was obscured by thick clouds below, that stretched out as far as they could see. Occasionally a dragon flew up out of the blanket of white, only to dip back into it a few minutes later.
Ghene finished his scouting and had rejoined them. ‘Stovologard and the coast are down there. I think we would be able to see it if the clouds were not obscuring our view.’
Roztov was half dozing, but looked up when Ghene had said this. He lifted his head, then both of his arms in a gesture of exultation. Slowly he moved them apart, muttering under his breath. He then let his arms fall back down to Meggelaine’s neck once more.
‘That’s better,’ he said finally as his head fell back into her mane.
The others had been watching him, but they turned north again to look once more at the clouds.
‘Is anything...?’ muttered Broddor.
As they watched, the clouds gradually parted, blown by distant winds, and the countryside was revealed to them. In the far distance, like the giant hilt of a black dagger, was the city of Stovologard. Its central tower was incredibly tall, larger even than the Spire, although it was hard to get a sense of scale from so far away. They could just make out specks flying around it that must have been dragons, which gave some indication of the tower’s size. Smoke rose from it, a black smear against the dark blue of the sea that lay on the edge of the horizon.
Below the tower sprawled a city of men, by far the largest settlement they had seen on Tanud.
There were also other smaller towns nestled in the hills. There were rivers, farms, arable land and patches of woodland. It looked remarkably like an Enttish county or one of the pocket kingdoms west of the Great Forest. It looked like home, in fact, except for the huge brooding and sinister presence of the tower of Stovologard that dominated the entire landscape.
The sun set and the land gradually became darkness.
‘We’d better get down off this mountainside before making camp,’ said Ghene, looking at Floran.
Floran nodded and held up his staff. It gave off a dull violet light, that was just enough for them all to see where they were going, but not enough to give away their position.
It was late at night when they descended far enough into the valleys north of the mountains to feel safe from the trolls. They sheltered in an abandoned mine. Looking down from the mine’s entrance they could see the lights of a village, but they didn’t feel prepared enough to enter it that night.
‘Can he really control the weather?’ Arrin asked Meggelaine as they sat together at the entrance of the mine while she checked over his arm.
‘If he can, it’s a new one on me.’
Arrin wasn’t sure what she meant.
‘Oh, definitely not. No way,’ said Meggelaine with a laugh as she looked up. ‘It was just a coincidence. He was just joking. Well, I think it was a joke...’
‘Druids can’t control the weather then, Meg?’
‘You know,’ she said patting his injured arm very gently. ‘I don’t know. Go get some rest young man, I’ll take the first watch. Good night.’
Arrin smiled, bowed stiffly and bid her good night.
Chapter 15
Approaching Stovologard
The next day Roztov flew down into the gently rolling hills that surrounded the city to explore the numerous towns and villages that dwelt in the shadow of Stovologard. He returned in the afternoon and reported that he had found a small town that would be a good place to travel to the next day.
‘It’s nice countryside too,’ he told them. ‘Good farm land. They keep their vegetains in orchards. The beasts hang around in the trees grazing. When summer comes these lands will be most verdant.’
‘And the town you found?’ prompted Meggelaine.
‘Oh yes,’ continued Roztov. ‘It should be big enough for us to hide in without looking too outlandish to the locals. It’s rather like Tunde was, but not all the buildings are of the tall wooden variety. You’ll see when we get there.’
They arrived at the town wall the next evening, having walked through the surrounding fields and vegetain orchards. After checking they were unobserved the druids dug a tunnel under the wall that surfaced behind a grain warehouse.
‘There is a good inn over there,’ said Roztov pointing, ‘and an eatery over there. I’ve not been in, but whatever they are cooking smells wonderful.’
‘Want to try it tonight?’ asked Meggelaine thinking of her tummy.
‘Let’s get rooms sorted out first.’
Floran, in his more or less disguise as a local, spread some gold around and got them a large external hut in the compound of the inn. It was a wooden building on five foot tall stilts, open on one side with enough mats on the floor to sleep ten. The open wall could be closed off with heavy sliding shutters and besides the mats the only other furniture was a small stove with a kettle on it and a long low table.
As they got settled in Floran told them, ‘I think they think I am a mixed blood. That’s what the landlord said anyway. Half a pint of milk and half a pint of chocolate.’
‘They have chocolate here?’ said Meggelaine with sudden great interest, but Floran merely shrugged. ‘I was translating, he used a courser term than that to denote the colour.’
‘I’ll never get used to sitting on the floor,’ Meggelaine sighed as she sat at the table. Four serving girls were bringing in tea and a large selection of food.
‘Don’t speak Enttish in front of the natives,’ whispered Roztov in her ear as he sat down beside her.
She nodded and put her finger to her lips, but still said, ‘thank you dear,’ as a serving girl put a cup of tea on the table beside her.
‘Oops, sorry!’ she croaked. Roztov rolled his eyes.
Once they were alone, eating happily together, they started talking again.
‘From what I gather,’ lectured Roztov, ‘there are more than one ethnic group living in this region. You have the dark skinned people like the ones in Tunde, but then also the taller, fairer people. They seem to be favoured for work as guards or soldiers.’
Meggelaine was tucking into a dish of roasted vegetables and strips of beef and not paying much attention. ‘This stuff is lovely. Can we try that restaurant tomorrow Roz?’
Ghene sighed. ‘Honestly, you two sound like tourists. This isn’t a holiday to Borland, Meg.’
‘Please Ghene, after all we’ve been through, we may as well make the most of it, because who knows where we’ll be next?’
‘Fill your belly for a long sea journey’, said Roztov quoting an old axiom from the coast of Styke.
‘The more you eat, the more you earn,’ piped up Broddor through mouthfuls of heavily seasoned vegetain meat, a common dwarven miners’ saying.
Although the inn appeared to be safe enough, they set a watch, old habits dying hard.
The next day most of them rested in the inn, keeping to their room, while Floran and Roztov explored the town. They took a small portion of the gold with them.
‘How is the money holding out?’ asked Ghene.
‘Still loa
ds left,’ replied Meggelaine who was doing an inventory of their bags. ‘Enough to last for months. Whatever bank Roz robbed is missing a fortune.’
When the men returned, a few hours later, they learned that it was safe enough for everyone else to go about too.
‘This region, between the city to the north and the countryside to the south, is a bit of a melting pot,’ said Roztov. ‘As long as Ghene hides his ears and we maintain the pretence that Meg is a child it should be fine. Oh, and don’t speak any Nillamandorian language in public.’
‘What about me?’ asked Broddor.
‘Oh, wear a hood and pretend to be a wizened old man.’
The dwarf snorted, but was interrupted by Meggelaine. ‘Yes, yes. Can we eat out tonight then?’
And so, that evening they ate at the “Happy Vegetain”. Floran paid well for a nice table in a hut at the back of the restaurant’s compound. The compound itself was full of fruit trees, more of an orchard. None were in season, but presumably later in the summer their produce would serve as part of the menu.
‘This place is great,’ declared Meggelaine as she started digging into a big bowl of yellow rice. There were dozens of different dishes laid out on the table, as well as several jugs of wine and cold sweetened tea.
Roztov mussed up her hair, but turned to Ghene. They were already deep in discussion, cataloguing all the information they had gathered about the place so far.
‘Humans of all shapes and sizes,’ remarked Ghene.
‘Yes,’ agreed Roztov. ‘I see two main ethnicities. The dark short ones and the tall fair ones.’
‘There is a war, and yet life goes on. I suppose it has not reached this far north yet. We observed plenty of activity in the sky above the inn today while you were out.’
‘Aye. Me and Floran saw soldiers martialling up to go south. We’ve not seen any refugees though. It may be that these sorts of wars are not uncommon and the people have learned to live with it.’
‘I’m going for a wee,’ said Meggelaine, both knees cracking as she got up from the floor.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Roztov.
‘Why?’
‘You are meant to be my daughter, remember?’
Meggelaine looked at him for a moment, then realised he was joking. She waved him away dismissively as she left.
Servants arrived to light the stove to keep the cold at bay and to warm up a large pot of fresh tea. Once they had left Ghene continued their conversation. ‘Notice how gracious they are. Always bowing, always respectful.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Roztov as he edged closer to the stove. ‘They seem to be doing well despite the war. There is plenty enough food to go around, this land is a bread basket.’
They watched as two servants walked past to another hut where a group of young men were celebrating something, toasting each other with cups of wine. The serving women wore their hair in tight buns, but all the men were tonsured, the backs of their head shaven. All wore tight, embroidered coats when they were outside. Underneath the servants wore cheap linen shirts, but the richer guests wore silk, died extravagant colours.
‘They seem a happy lot anyway,’ said Roztov referring to the young men.
Down at the other end of the table Tankle and Arrin were talking quietly together.
‘They have forgotten Sal,’ said Tankle. ‘See how the druid’s laugh and joke as they always do.’
‘I think they do it in order to prevent brooding,’ said Arrin, leaning in while nursing his splinted arm.
Broddor was stumbling about the hut pretending to be a drunk old man, asking if anyone had seen his walking stick.
‘Every time I look at him with half his beard singed off I can’t help it!’ cackled Meggelaine with a fit of the giggles. The one glass of wine she had drunk had already gone to her head.
‘Merriment does nothing other than pain my heart,’ said Tankle. ‘Sal’s death has affected me deeply. More so than I realised until now.’
‘It’s understandable. We are still in great danger. Do you not get any solace from your boyfriend?’ asked Arrin with a smile.
Tankle gave him a look. ‘Floran is charming when alone, but when he is with his friends he ignores me.’
‘You could do worse.’
‘The wreck was such a shock, too big a shock, I can’t think about it. But Sal, he’d survived with us for so long. I thought, surely, we three, would survive to tell this tale. Now I don’t know anything. They never looked for his body, although I’m sure they could use their magic to do so. They’ve said nothing... oh.’
Broddor had stopped his clowning and had sat down beside them, having overheard Tankle’s last few words. ‘We have all of us,’ he said gesturing to his friends while looking Tankle in the eye earnestly, ‘lost more comrades than we can count, and yes, that may sometimes make us appear cold. For that I apologise.’
Broddor was already moderately drunk. He took a full bottle of wine and filled everyone’s cup. Raising his, he toasted the memory of Salveri in dwarfish, then translated it into Enttish for everyone else. ‘Lo, I see my father. Lo, I see my mother. Lo, I see my brothers and sisters. Lo, I see a line of dwarves back unto the beginning. I go to take my place among them, in the halls of Orenkring where the brave live forever.’
Broddor then sat and looked into his empty cup for a few minutes as the others kept a respectful silence. It wasn’t long before another wine jug was summoned and the merry chatter began again.
They were thinking of returning to their inn when a commotion broke out at the hut across the way from them. A dozen or so town guards, dressed in armour similar to that of the manhunters, arrived and arrested one of the young men. He was led away, leaving the others in a daze.
‘Go ask the landlord what just happened, Tup,’ said Ghene.
Floran got up from the floor and went over to the reception area. When he returned he passed on what he had found out. ‘I had to loosen his tongue with a few coins, but apparently the fellow that was taken away is a dissident. An enemy of the state.’
They all mulled this information over for a while. Roztov was the first to speak.
‘I’m going to spring him,’ he said standing up. ‘Ghene, meet me back at the mine. Everyone else just meet me back at the inn later.’
Then, after making sure none of the locals were looking he turned into a sparrowhawk and flew off.
Ghene waited at the cave until it was near midnight. A dark shape flew down from the sky and landed at the entrance. A confused young man leapt down from the hippogriff and fell to his knees. Ghene offered a hand and pulled him to his feet.
Roztov turned back into a man and gently pushed them all into the mine.
‘How did you do it?’ asked Ghene.
‘Sniffed about as a rock lizard. There is only one dungeon here. Tunnelled down to him, he took a bit of convincing, but I persuaded him to follow me out. Then flew here.’
Ghene had lit a fire further back in the mine and Roztov gestured for the young man to warm himself up by it. He warily sat down and held his hands out to the flames.
Roztov and then after a moment’s hesitation, Ghene, turned into rock lizards. They scampered up onto rocks beside the camp fire.
‘Can you understand me, lizard Ghene?’ asked Roztov.
‘Yesssss, garg. Ug,’ replied the other lizard who then began coughing. He tried again, but it was nonsense.
‘You are trying to speak Enttish, but it’s coming out as gobbledygook. Don’t think about it. Talk Elvish. It will come out as Draconic. It’s like when we turn into wolves and our speech turns into growls and barks. Let the shape-shifting magic handle it.’
Ghene coughed some more.
‘Right, I think I’ve got it,’ said Ghene the rock lizard. ‘Ak. Woof woof, bark bark. Got it.’
Both lizards then turned to the young man, who looked startled at their sudden attention.
‘Relax,’ said the black and white coloured lizard that was Roztov. ‘What is your na
me?’
‘Ah, my name is Honni, of the Beri clan.’
‘Why did the guards take you?’ asked the pale blue lizard that was Ghene.
‘I was arrested for complaining about the gendarmes.’
‘You mean the guards? The men in black armour that took you away?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was for just complaining?’
‘Well yes,’ nodded the young man, still in a somewhat stunned state from his recent experiences. ‘I’d drunk too much. We live in fear of the gendarmes, they have the power of life and death over everyone. Yet, there are some of us that dare speak against them.’
‘You are organised?’ asked Roztov with interest. ‘You conspire against the dragons also?’
Honni seemed shocked. ‘I would never plot against our lords the dragons. But, yes, there are some of us, though not many, that seek to lift the yoke of oppression. The gendarmes arrest us and steal our belongings. When someone goes to the prisons to seek the release of a loved one then they too are likely arrested. Very few are ever seen again. It is a great injustice.’
‘I see,’ said Ghene. Then pondering the fact that the gendarmes were mainly fair skinned he asked, ‘tell us about why there are dark skinned people and light skinned people.’
‘Oh well, the pale skinned people are called Bullays. The Bullays, the teachers say, arrived five hundred years ago, in long boats from the east. I have several Bullay friends, they are nice people, but the dragons favour them for the army and gendarmerie. The army are brave against the vile and treacherous attacks of the Chasm, but the gendarmes are terrible, a law unto themselves and very corrupt. I honour and respect our mighty dragon overlords of course, ah...’
Honni’s fast paced chatter petered off into confused silence.