Shortly afterwards they moved off. The western road to Claw Pass hugged the mountain side, with a sheer drop into the pine forest on its left of some twenty feet or more. This meant that they
were rather exposed to the biting wind, causing them to pull their cloaks tightly around their ears and their noses to run uncontrollably. Morgan laughed at their discomfiture.
‘This is just a taste of what is to come.’
After travelling for some hours the road dipped under the tree line, providing some relief from the wind. They took advantage of this, stopping to eat a brief lunch and waiting for their ears to
thaw. With the horses, progress was disappointingly slow and Morgan realised that they wouldn’t get to the pass until the morning. Having resigned himself to that, he decided not to force the
pace too much and camp for the evening quite early, all the better to conserve their strength for what was to come. Eventually the road dropped so that it was now level with the floor of the
forest. Little light filtered down through the high branches of the trees, and the ground, carpeted with needles, was light and spongy underfoot. Not a bird sang in the trees and no animal was seen
excepting the occasional squirrel scampering into the high branches, eager to build up its store of winter food. This was a rarely used road at this time of year and they met no one on it all day.
The silence cast a pallor over everyone, making them reluctant to speak or stray from their own thoughts.
They made camp, lit a fire and Samson regaled everyone with tunes on his flute; he was quite the virtuoso and before too long they were all singing around the fire, even Cedric and Willem, who
had a thousand requests to bare his forearm and show off his new tattoo. The frivolities were cut short, however, as the wind picked up and they were pelted with bursts of short squally rain. Those
that could not fit into the wagon slept directly under it. In this fashion they passed an uneasy night.
In the morning they started off early. Within half an hour they passed a fast-flowing mountain stream, small enough for the wagon to cross it without difficulty but enabling them to fill all
their water skins. The road veered north shortly after and started climbing again, leaving the forest behind, and less than an hour into their journey they reached the Tower of Hayader, which
marked the starting point Claw Pass. It was an unassuming grey stone tower that did not serve as a barrier to the pass, as the west road they were on and the south road which joined it here both
gave it a wide berth before climbing upward into a U-shape cleft in the rock. It was inhabited though; a couple of men in the red livery of Baron Lasgaart come out to speak with them.
‘Hail there, friends,’ said one. ‘Are you seriously going to attempt the pass before springtime?’
‘We have no choice,’ said Morgan. ‘We are on urgent business on behalf of the Grand Duke and Baron Felmere.’
‘Then it is not for me to stop you, but I warn you: if the snow starts before you get to Jeremiah’s Saddle, turn back. The pass will be impossible to clear if that happens. There are
tales of people resorting to eating each other after they had got themselves trapped up there.’
‘Don’t worry!’ Morgan indicated Rozgon. ‘If it comes to that, he will see us through winter, spring and summer.’
The man laughed and passed a wooden box up to Varen, who was leading the horses. ‘Iron rations, meat and fat. You may need it on the journey ahead.’
‘Thank you,’ said Morgan. ‘I will mention you to Baron Felmere if we return.’
And with that they passed the tower and started to climb the wide road that led into the gaping maw of the pass.
It was a different type of dawn chorus for Cheris. The raucous cries of seagulls had been replaced by the chatter of a great variety of smaller birds, some musical, some less
so. Add to that, the early rumbling of wheeled traffic on the road outside her room and she had no problem getting up and being ready for the next part of her journey. Marcus had got what he wanted
– the new knight in charge of their escort was both older and uglier. He had a large red birthmark that covered his right cheek and went by the name of Sir Norton. As she waited in the frosty
dawn air for the horses to be fixed to the wagon that she and Marcus would be sharing, she cast her eyes about hoping for a glimpse of Sir Dylan but with no success. Her heart sank a little.
There were four knights going with them in total; apparently there would be a further twenty or so at the army camp, all of whom were employed to look after the healer mage, a lady called Anaya.
Cheris remembered her well, a striking lady some ten to fifteen years older than her with bright-red hair held in a bun. She was quite a serious woman, not prone to outbursts of laughter. Cheris
made a mental note to act accordingly when she met her.
One of the knights was a very young lad, probably not even in his twenties, who went by the name of Roland. It turned out the reason he was on this trip was that he was very good with horses,
having grown up on a farm. He would be the one driving the wagon for them and made a beeline for Cheris when he saw her. He explained what he would be doing on this trip. which prompted her to
ask:
‘Have you finished all your knightly training? Please don’t think I am being rude or anything, but you look as if you have barely started shaving.’
‘No, my Lady, I am but a squire who has barely embarked on his studies. It will be several years before I can call myself a knight. Rather, I am here to tend the horses and clean the
knights’ armour, weapons and so forth.’ He looked at her as if unsure of what to say next.
‘Pardon me, my Lady, but I have never met a mage before, I am ... curious as to the nature of your powers. I know I will be trained in as to how you use your abilities, but this will be
only from a knight’s perspective. I wonder if, as we travel, you could try and explain magic from the position of one who wields it.’
Cheris looked surprised. ‘I was not expecting such a request. I fear it will be difficult if not impossible for me to convey the complexities of our powers but ... yes, I will try. I
suppose it is a long journey and this may help alleviate any tedium.’ She was painfully aware that Marcus was stood not ten feet from her and the last thing she wanted to do was give the
impression of flirting with yet another young man. She decided to try and treat him as a younger brother, so as not to give off the wrong signals.
Sir Norton called to them. ‘Everything is ready. If you could both climb into the caravan. We loaded your stuff on board earlier.’
At this, Roland gave her a hand up as she climbed the small ladder into the back of the caravan and clambered inside.
It was a solidly built affair with wooden sides and a canvas roof. On either side of it was a long couch that would also double as a bed. It had two small windows and at the front were their
trunks, sitting alongside a set of drawers that held cooking utensils, lamp oil and the like. The only access to the caravan was at the rear, where the wooden panel had been fashioned into a
lockable door. Marcus climbed in after her, carrying what looked like a white sheet. ‘The knights have given me this. There are hooks here and ... umm ... here that we can hang it from to
give us privacy if required.’
‘Excellent, I hope you don’t snore.’
‘I don’t really know; I am always asleep at the time.’
They pottered around for a while and rigged the sheet up folding it over itself for the time being. Cheris got out her mirror and a small bottle of scented water, and dabbed a little behind her
ears. As she sat down, she heard a cry from the knights and felt the caravan slowly lurch forward. They were off.
For this, the first, part of the journey she got on to her knees on the couch and looked out of the window, ignoring Marcus comment of ‘No need to get so excited, it really is quite
unremarkable out there.’ She saw the wagon bathed in shadow as they passed under the walls, out of the city gates and over the drawbridge, and then it was all rolling grassland dotted with
the occasional tree or small copse. They were going gently downhill and as she craned her neck to look back she could see the imposing grey city walls, crenellated, with many conical towers getting
smaller in the distance. The sky was a leaden colour studded with ominous low-lying black clouds; it looked like it would be a rather nasty day.
‘If you come over this side, you can see the sea.’ said Marcus.
‘Thank you but no. I have seen enough of the sea in my lifetime.’
‘Yes, I suppose you have; it will take us about two to three weeks to complete our journey. Early tomorrow we will cross the Red River, a branch of the Erskon and then it’s ten days
or so through a green country, full of farms and small villages, until we reach the Kada, the first of the Seven Rivers. You will see things change then; it is a military frontier after all. After
that, we should get to the army’s forward camp within a few days, depending on where it is of course – the battlefront is constantly changing.’
‘I don’t really want to think about war or battle, not just yet anyway; I just want fresh air and peace for a while, and no one shouting at me of course.’
‘And what am I to do for my amusement if I can’t shout at you?’
‘See, I only misbehave to keep you happy.’
He sighed wearily. ‘It’s going to be a long, long journey.’
The knights stopped at about noon where they took a lunch consisting of a hot wheat porridge washed down with some rather nasty weak ale. They stood under a low canvas pavilion
that they had attached to the rear of the caravan – the rain had started to come down quite heavily. Lunch over, Cheris went and sat with Roland at the front of the wagon. Its canvas roof
extended over them to keep them dry and Cheris covered herself with a blanket to keep out the cold.
‘Now then, young Roland, what is it you wish to know?’
‘Oh, where to begin?’ He tugged the reins, called to the horses and they were off again. ‘Well, basically what makes you all so special? How are you able to command these
powers? Do the Gods give them to you?’
She laughed. ‘That’s a lot of questions to begin with. Hmmm, it could take some time to answer. Let me see...’ Her mind went back to some of Marcus’s early lessons
‘What do you see ahead of you?’
‘Well, there is the road, a couple of houses, Sir Norton and Sir Werner, the red flag, the horses, what else is there?’ He sounded puzzled.
‘You are right, of course; all that is ahead of us. But look at Sir Norton, for example. What if I were to tell you there is another world, a world that occupies the same space as our own
but one that exists under completely different rules. A world of energy, where nothing is corporeal or solid. Sir Norton on his horse is occupying the space taken by this energy; it runs over him,
under him, inside him and through him, and we, as mages, have the ability of ‘‘seeing’’ this world in our minds and drawing power from it. We can cross the divide, the
barrier between these worlds and, with practice, can control and shape what we take from it to our will. We all have different abilities: some of us are stronger and can take more power, or mana,
from the Plane of Lucan without risking any of its concomitant dangers.’
‘What dangers? And can you actually ‘‘see’’ this world?’
‘No, not as you or I see Sir Norton. Lucan has given us the ability to let it into our minds – there and there alone is where we can picture it. And, as for the dangers, well, think
about it: we are using our minds to shape and redirect energy; get it wrong, lose control of that energy and you could be in enormous trouble. At best, you forget what you are doing, lose control
of yourself for a moment; at worst, your brain can literally fry.’
‘Have you ever seen this happen?’
‘At the college we are brought on very very slowly. We spend years doing mental exercises, incantations, focusing ourselves through the use of things like hand gestures, all of which helps
to give us full control over what we wish to accomplish ... but, yes, things do go wrong. Some of us have too much ability with too little mental discipline and that is when things can get messy.
There was a boy of about ten, I remember; I had only been at the college a few months and a group of us younger initiates were practising some basic summoning when the poor lad started screaming.
Our mentors ran to help him but it was too late. Blood started pouring from his nose, his mouth, and his eyes and ears. Then he stopped screaming and collapsed, dead. It was horrible. None of us
would try
anything
for a while after that.’ She stopped, peering reflectively ahead through the rain and gloom.
‘Are you able to just ... um ... stop using your powers, so that that sort of thing doesn’t happen to you?’
‘Theoretically yes, but it takes an awful lot of self-discipline; your mind is always in touch with that magical part of it and the temptation is always there. At the college they
recommend occasional, supervised, low level use of magic – lighting lamps, starting a fire, in a fireplace of course, just to keep the urge to use our powers in check. The best analogy I can
think of is that it’s like making love; you don’t ever have to do it but it releases a lot of stress and tension when you do. Oh Elissa preserve me, I’ve embarrassed you,
haven’t I? I am so sorry, I just forget where I am sometimes.’ She put her hand over her mouth – the poor boy was scarlet!
‘No, no, my Lady,’ he mumbled. ‘Everything you are saying is very interesting. This other world you describe; does anything live there?’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘creatures of elemental energy, fire, lightning, ice and the like. They are like the forms you see Lucan take in the Scriptures. They are capricious and
can be quick to anger, so our training enables us to spend as little time as possible in their world so as we do not attract them to us. We are an alien presence there, you see; they could be
friendly or hostile, but it is better for us never to find out.’
‘You are talking about demons, yes? Are there not forbidden arts that enable you to call them into this world?’