The Longsword Chronicles: Book 03 - Sight and Sound Read online

  It was Elayeen, of course, who set the pace, and perhaps to her eye the road and its lack of vegetation was clearly marked by the contrast of living things growing either side of it, once the last of the buildings that marked the northern end of the town were behind them. They rode then at a gentle trot, and Elayeen seemed perfectly content with Kahla slightly behind her on the left flank and Jaxon likewise on the right.

  Ten minutes later the pace slowed to a walk where the road swung wide to the east and cobbles gave way to a hard-baked track leading to the far distant Callodon Castletown. Elayeen turned her head a little and slowed, allowing Kahla’s horse to draw alongside her. They had left the track, and were now on short grass, and it quickly became obvious that Eldengaze needed reassurance that no obstacles lay hidden from her sight in front of them.

  “Leave them,” Gawain said softly to Allazar, knowing by some instinct that the wizard was considering riding forward to supplant the entirely inexperienced rider beside Elayeen.

  “Is that wise?” Allazar muttered.

  “If Eldengaze wishes to ride point and doesn’t want to be dazzled by my brightness, then wise or not those two must learn quickly to trust each other, and Kahla and Jaxon have but a short time to become accustomed to being on horseback. They were barely clinging on at the gentlest of trots, and the forest is only a few hours away.”

  It was, visible through the mid-morning haze in the distance.

  “All this was once forest, my lord,” Arramin announced from behind them, “The trees slowly cleared to make way for Jarn and the needs of its inhabitants. Jarn began as little more than a small military outpost, and gradually grew to become the town we know today.”

  Kahla’s quiet occasional words with Elayeen suddenly became a more urgent stream, and Elayeen swung her horse slightly to the north-east. The reason became obvious a few minutes later as the charred remains of huts and the jagged wreckage of what was once a Ramoth tower was passed on their left flank. The Ramoth tower and camp had been constructed here so that all leaving and entering the town from the north would see it. Gawain smiled darkly at the memory of ashes falling like snow from the evening sky, and the glow from the fires that all in Jarn had indeed seen the night he’d destroyed it. Clumps of grass were growing through the wreckage, nature slowly reclaiming the land.

  Life for Gawain had been so much simpler a year ago, he knew. Find the enemy. Destroy the enemy. Finding the enemy had been easy with the map Allazar had made on Brock of Callodon’s orders. Destroying them had been relatively easy too. Here, east of Goria, there were no prized praetorian legions, well-drilled and hard trained in fighting. Such mercenaries as the Ramoth had hired had mostly come from the western wilds in the north, up by the farak gorin where even now Morloch’s armies waited. And after Morloch’s Breath had destroyed Raheen, such forces as kings might command here in the lowlands were held back, forbidden to take action. A warrior of Raheen though, prepared and trained for war from an early age, would have no trouble against untrained mercenaries, and Gawain certainly hadn’t had any.

  It was why he had been regarded with such quiet awe by the lowlanders he’d encountered, and still doubtless was. After so long at peace, lulled into an almost indolent stupor by the absence of a Morloch carefully and secretly drawing his plans against them, the lowlands had been stunned into submission by nothing more than nonsense and hired thugs. And then, finally, they’d been cowed by the utter devastation of Raheen. Allazar had been right, of course, back at the outpost at the foot of Raheen when Jaxon had told his tale of the darkness loosed upon Goria; slaves and free men needed handling with different gloves.

  In Goria, military might was needed to maintain order, not just to keep slaves in place, but also to keep the provincial lords, the Tals, from rising against the Emperor as the Goth-lords had once done. Such military power would have and did make short work of chanting idiots with their tiny tinkling bells, and there would be far too few free people there to lure away from their homes and into the ranks of mindless followers. There, the darkness had been needed to crush resistance. Here, east of the Empire, Morloch’s task had been made so much easier by the lack of strength and lands too long in comfort and peace.

  “A copper for your thoughts, Longsword,” Allazar said, noting the distant look in Gawain’s eyes.

  “Oh, I was just thinking. And remembering.”

  “Those days are now thankfully consigned to history,” the wizard cautioned, “The longsword warrior no longer wanders alone, wreaking vengeance on shave-headed emissaries of Morloch’s great deception.”

  Gawain stared at Elayeen’s back for a moment, before turning his steel-grey eyes on the wizard. “I know. But there’s one thing can be said for those days, Allazar.”

  “Which is?”

  “I knew where I was going and what I was going to do when I got there.”

  “Ah.”

  After a few minutes of silence save for the horses plodding at a fast walk across the soft and grassy earth, Gawain pulled a familiar leather map from inside his tunic. Allazar recognised it immediately, it was he who’d made it. It was the map of the southlands, on which he’d burned the location of all the Ramoth towers whose existence he knew of from his own travels before the days of the DarkSlayer.

  Gawain unfolded and refolded the map until it showed the Old Kingdom of Pellarn, the north-western reaches of Callodon, and the south-western tip of the plains of Juria. The expanse of grassland they were crossing now was clearly marked, as was the tiny black spot that Allazar had burned there to mark the tower they had just passed. A glance due west showed open grass sweeping away towards the unseen source of the River Ostern, to the west of which all was Pellarn territory.

  It was easy to see why neither Pellarn, Callodon, nor Juria had ever really contested possession of the forest. It extended for miles to the west into Pellarn, clear to the Eramak River, for centuries the accepted border with Goria. And ahead of them, it swept due north almost as far as the farak gorin itself, becoming Elvendere halfway up the plains of Juria. Besides, no-one had lived in the forest this far south since the destruction of Calhaneth a thousand years ago.

  “You are sure, wizard Arramin, that we can reach Shiyanath in half the time it would take to ride there north across the plains?” Gawain asked over his shoulder.

  “I am, my lord. Assuming that the Canal of Thal-Marrahan is still functional, and I do not know why it should not be. Four days to Calhaneth, my lord, if my calculations are correct, and then two weeks along the great water road to Ostinath…”

  “…And then ten days along this Threnderrin Way to Shiyanath, yes. Perhaps I’m just being overly sceptical, never having seen this ‘great water road’ your old books speak of.”

  “It is easy to describe, my lord, but not until it is in the eye of the beholder does the true magnitude of its accomplishment become clear. Or so it was described by those who saw it, before the destruction of Calhaneth. If one imagines a great trench, rectangular in section, lined with stone, and filled with water, one has it. Then imagine this great stone channel cutting through the forest like a knife, arrow-straight to Ostinath in Elvendere.”

  Gawain shifted in his saddle, frowning, and Allazar gave him a knowing look. It was well-known that the young man did not like wizards, did not trust wizards, and certainly did not enjoy being dependent on their knowledge or advice. Gawain noted the look and knew exactly what Allazar was thinking too.

  “If the canal is still there and full of water, I still don’t see how, even with this barge you mentioned floating merrily along, we can reach Ostinath in so short a time,” Gawain eyed the map again, “It’d take at least four weeks hard ride.”

  Allazar smiled, looking away to the west, and Gawain knew immediately that Arramin’s answer would be childishly simple.

  “My lord, unlike horses and men, the barge needs neither food nor rest nor sleep. Aside for some slight delays in the great lifts, the journey will be made at a steady and unbroken
pace.”

  “Assuming there are no obstacles and these lifts work after a thousand years of neglect,” Gawain mumbled.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Gawain eyed the forest ahead, and the clear expanse of the plains to the northeast. He had a few hours in which to change his mind, though he knew he would not do so.

  Elayeen suddenly slowed, her gaze fixed high above the forest bubbling up in the northwest. Gawain and the others strained their eyes, but could see nothing. After a few breathless moments, her gaze swung to the north again and the pace quickened once more.

  “Dwarfspit,” Gawain sighed, under his breath or so he thought.

  “Indeed,” Allazar agreed, and it was an extremely watchful group of travellers who continued their journey towards the forest of Pellarn.

  When they drew to within a few hundred yards of the tree line the pace slowed even more, until Gawain finally called a halt for an early lunch and suggested that afterwards, for the sake of Elayeen, they’d proceed on foot. He dismounted and sat on one of the reasons why; a tree-stump, well weathered, and there were hundreds like it all around them, becoming fresher-cut closer to the tree line. Kahla simply wasn’t an accomplished enough rider to guide Elayeen’s horse around the obstacles and Elayeen couldn’t discern their shapes well enough to avoid them herself. Her horse might be able to manage by itself, but it simply wasn’t worth the risk given the short distance.

  “Loggers from Jarn, and also from Callodon Castle,” Allazar said, stretching and reaching into his shoulder-bag for what Gawain just knew would be a door-step of a beef sandwich.

  “And the village of Doosen, about twenty miles to the northeast,” Tyrane announced. “That’s Juria, over there, and the stumps all around us are why no-one’s ever really disputed the forest. We all need the wood, and there’s plenty of it. No need to start a fight over it.”

  “A pity the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the lands south of the Teeth,” Gawain muttered, paring a slice of frak with his boot knife. “There’d be no need of the Kings’ Council at Shiyanath.”

  “Alas, my lord,” Arramin smiled, slipping his stick with its fabric strap over his head to sit on a nearby stump, “Life here in these lands has never been as simple as it must have been for your own people.”

  “True,” Gawain conceded, and noticing that everyone else was lunching on various types of fresh-made sandwiches from the inn, popped his slice of frak into his mouth, adding: “Sometimes the simplest things in life are also the best.”

  Elayeen suddenly stood and stared away into the sky to the northeast. She canted her head, and seemed to frown a little, then simply sat down and continued eating her sandwich.

  “Dwmmffift” Gawain mumbled, chewing on the leathery meat.

  “The city of Calhaneth, Serre wizard, do the books tell us what it was like?” Tyrane looked genuinely interested, and Arramin was genuinely happy to share the knowledge he’d acquired through his long years of reading and study.

  “It was wondrous, wondrous indeed,” he sighed. “Or so Applinius The Walker described it. He was famed, in his day, for his travels. He would journey, always on foot, from village to village, town to town, city to city, and in his writings, he would describe whatever he found. Little escaped his attention, from the quality of the food and conviviality of the hosts in the hostelries he visited, to the demeanour, good or bad, of those who dwelled in the places he visited, and their customs and ways.

  “It was his hope to catalogue life as it was lived in his day, and to provide worthwhile guides for travellers and traders who might benefit from an objective knowledge of the lands and their peoples. Some of his little guides still survive and are legible, and to a student of history such as myself are lovely little treasures. Alas, his wanderlust drove Applinius west of the river we call the Eramak, and west of the civilisation enjoyed here in the eastern lands. There, in Goria, he was, it was said, taken for a spy, and hanged from a gibbet on the west bank of the river as a warning to others. The Empire was cruel and guarded its lands with great jealousy even then.”

  Arramin paused to take a bite of his sandwich, and to drink before continuing:

  “But to Calhaneth. The forest we see yonder and the stumps upon which we sit were not here, in the days of Applinius. A thousand years of growth have stretched the woodlands far beyond the road’s ending. The Walker, in his guide, describes a village close to the edge of the forest, similar perhaps to Jarn but farther north. In that village, travellers to and from Calhaneth would rest before their onward journeys. The name of that village was Joornath, and Applinius describes it as having broad fields to the south and west, and many sheep.

  “Alas, with the destruction of Calhaneth the reason for Joornath’s existence likewise was destroyed. In a very little time, at least according to history’s great clock, Joornath’s glory, such as it was, faded, and after falling into disrepair was itself razed to the ground during a battle between Pellarn and what was then Brynnland.

  “Brynnland was little more than a minor fiefdom ruled by a war-lord whose expectations far outweighed his abilities. The Brynn’s forces were destroyed, its people scattered, and the forces of Pellarn retreated to their homeland. In time, the forests of the north and south closed the gap between Pellarn and the plains we now know as Juria, and here we sit.”

  “I have never heard of this Brynnland,” Tyrane announced, frowning and thinking hard.

  “It was a long time ago, Captain. The village of Doosen is probably quite close to the area where the Brynn had their fortified village or camp,” Arramin smiled, and ate, and drank, and lost himself in thought.

  After a long pause, Allazar gently prompted the elderly wizard. “And Calhaneth, Master Arramin?”

  “Oh dear me, yes. Calhaneth. Applinius described his journey through the woodland gate, the southern terminus of the great south road, where a small detachment of elves stood guard and watched over the travellers as they passed. It is a broad avenue of cobbles, broad enough for eight to ride abreast in comfort, he said, passing straight through the forest and lined by trees of great height whose fine vaulted canopy admits sufficient light for easy travel.

  “He then describes the baths and boarding halls, stone-built, where one arrives near the end of a day’s travel. A multitude of pools of crystal-clear warm water, which flows from an unseen spring east to west, cooling as it progress from pool to pool, affording the travellers an opportunity to bathe and relax before dining in one of the halls and availing themselves of the dormitories on the upper floors.

  “Onward next day to the city, which consisted of concentric circles of buildings; the outer circles were formed by the dwellings of those who lived there and all the facilities which served them. Broad cobbled streets and avenues, lined with statues and ornaments, hanging baskets of flowers and open green spaces.

  “Then came the circle of buildings which contained the hostels for students and travellers, inns and taverns, theatres and galleries. Buildings and paving of blue-stone and white-stone, sparkling in the sunshine. Finally, in the middle, the colleges, the buildings themselves curved to match the radius of the circle in which they were built. Blue-stone buildings with white-stone colonnades, cool and airy. And at the very centre of the city, the domed roundtower of Calhaneth, squat, and broad, the great college and library of natural magycks, where wizards and elfwizards studied together, sharing their knowledge and building upon it for the good of all the kindred.”

  Arramin sighed again, and finished his sandwich.

  “How could such a place be destroyed?” Tyrane asked softly, “It seems a wonder.”

  “And so it was,” Arramin agreed. “Yet fire cares not what it consumes once it begins to rage unchecked. Applinius also wrote, with a little disappointment I think, of stone facades and wooden frames within many of the buildings, and of course floors, roofs and joists were all of wood.”

  “It is likely,” Allazar sighed, “That the city being built upon a circular plan
, and it being in the forest, such breezes as there were would have swirled like a whirlpool, and once the fire took hold, fanned the flames, whipping spark and ember through those broad streets.”

  “And thence into the forest itself, perhaps,” Arramin agreed. “Yet the event and its aftermath are shrouded in mystery; perhaps the pain of its loss was too great for survivors to wish to commit to posterity records of what happened to the glory of that great centre of learning and hope. It was not long after, our elven cousins closed their borders, and withdrew from the wider world.”

  “Yet such events shape all our lives,” Allazar sighed.

  Gawain glanced at Elayeen, remembering ancient circles of a different kind.

  “Yes, they do.”