Now, though, they still travelled through open countryside. The day was unfolding dim and soggy, no hint of a break in the lowering clouds or misting rain. There wasn’t much hereabouts but rabbits and the eagles who hunted them. Even when it wasn’t raining, this stretch of Lur was seldom troubled by carts and coaches. Rafel liked this corner of the kingdom. Liked its wildness and its solitude. When they were sprats, he and Goose had played explorer out here. Under blue skies and a warm sun, frighting themselves with imaginary dangers.
Goose
. He felt his guts squeeze.
Don’t think on him. You’re doing what you can, as fast as you can
.
Hoof beats behind them, steadily gaining. He glanced round to see Arlin’s cantering approach. Firedragon shied. Holding the horse steady with knees and hands, Rafel looked sideways as the Doranen mage kept on cantering, alongside the carriage then past it until he’d drawn level. Then he dropped his own stallion back to the steady trot that kept them bowling along towards Gribley. With the collar of his oiled coat turned up and his hat pulled low, Arlin’s face was almost completely hidden. He offered no greeting, no comment of any kind.
Rafel sighed.
Don’t see how this is going to work if we can’t say two civil words to each other.
“Arlin, d’you reckon—”
“I reckon you needn’t concern yourself about what I reckon,” said Arlin, with the swiftest of glances. “The Council in its…
wisdom
… has chosen this path for us. I’ll ride it because I have to. Because compared with finding Lost Dorana, where my people will at last be free of this pathetic, crumbling kingdom, my distaste for your company is not important. But that doesn’t mean I have to indulge you in pointless conversation.”
Days with this poxy shit? Weeks?
Months,
maybe? Rafel swallowed dismay. “Fine, Arlin. So we ain’t friends, and never will be. But—”
Deep in the earth a soft groaning, growing louder. The dull ache in his bones grew sharp edges. Closed his throat. Nearly—nearly—
“Hold up,” he said, his belly churning. “Arlin,
hold up!
” Ignoring the Doranen’s protests, he reefed Firedragon round in a tight circle.
“Coachman, halt your team!”
“What are you doing?” Arlin demanded as his coachman slowed the carriage. “You don’t give orders to my man. You don’t—”
“Shut your trap, Arlin,” he said, one fist raised. His blood was turbulent, warning whispers rising swiftly to a scream. The rain kept falling but the world felt… still.
And then came the tremor, bursting through the deep soil and the rocks, through the skin and bones and flesh of the kingdom. Its echo burst through him and through the Olken councilors trapped in Arlin’s carriage. As they cried out, and the carriage-horses plunged in their harness, as the wretched earth roiled and rippled and Arlin Garrick swore, trying to control his panicked stallion, Rafel clung to Firedragon praying he’d not fall off. Leaned over the horse’s shoulder and vomited his breakfast onto the shivering road. Lur’s pain was his pain, flowing in white-hot rivers through his veins.
At long last it stopped.
Easing himself upright, spitting bile-tainted saliva, small bonfires of pain burning behind his eyes and in his joints, he looked first to the carriage—no damage, no horse injured—and then to Arlin. The Doranen was pale, his eyes slitted as he wrestled his own jittery horse to a standstill.
He spat again, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You all right, Arlin?”
Arlin looked at him blankly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Turning, he waved a hand at his coachman. “Get that carriage moving, you fool! We’ll not reach Gribley before midnight if we stand about here admiring the scenery.”
The coachman touched his hat-brim. “Yes, my lord.”
Bloody Arlin
. Rafel nudged Firedragon to the edge of the road, waited for the carriage to draw level then urged the horse to keep pace with it. “Tom,” he said, peering inside. “You fine gentlemen all dandy?”
Like Arlin they were pale, but unharmed. “Near enough,” said Tom, next to the window. “But Rafel—”
Their blood surely continued to sizzle, just like his. “I know,” he said bleakly. “And you can bet we’ll feel worse before we feel better. But we ain’t got a choice, eh?”
Tom glanced at his companions. “No,” he said, subdued. “No, I suppose not.”
And with that sobering realisation, the journey continued.
They reached the Black Woods village of Gribley nearly six hours past sunset. Long shadows stretched across the glimlit courtyard of the village’s modest inn, where the Council had arranged for them to stay the night and where Firedragon and Arlin’s stallion would be stabled until fetched. Brooding around them, the hushed Black Woods. Daunting above them, Barl’s Mountains.
As the coachman and the inn’s stable hands saw to the carriage, Arlin handed his stallion over to the stablemeister’s care and stalked inside without a word to anyone else. Rafel tended Firedragon himself, unsaddling and grooming him, making sure he’d taken no unnoticed hurt in the long ride from Dorana. When the horse was clean and settled he had words with the stablemeister, then measured Firedragon’s feed to his own satisfaction. Giving the horse supper, smoothing his untangled red-flame mane, he bid his private farewell. Waited until he could show his face to the world, and went in search of his companions.
He found Tom, Clyne and Hambly supping ale in the inn’s plain parlour. “Where’s Arlin?”
The councilors exchanged looks. “Taking his leisure alone, in his room,” said Tom, indifferent. “We asked him to join us.”
“Waste of good breath, Tom.”
Another exchanged look. “Yes.”
Staring at them, Rafel was uncomfortably aware that Tom and his friends didn’t welcome his company. Why? ’Cause they had privy Council business to discuss? Or ’cause they wanted to discuss him? Because he made
them
feel uncomfortable? The reason prob’ly didn’t matter. Point was, they were sitting there waiting for him to go away.
Fine. I ain’t an idiot. I can take a hint.
But it didn’t bode well for the rest of their journey.
“I’m a mite travelsore myself,” he said, keeping his voice casual. “A bath sounds inviting. Enjoy your ale, councilors.”
Wearily climbing the stairs to his room, he considered disturbing Arlin—then reconsidered the notion. Trying to make peace with the Doranen would only be a waste of
his
good breath. After his bath he ate a plain hearty meal brought up to him from the kitchen, mutton and potato and carrot stewed in thick gravy, and downed three mugs of strong ale. After that he studied Durm’s spells until his eyes wouldn’t stay open, then tumbled headfirst into sleep. Pain danced through his uneasy dreams, and he woke at murky first light unrefreshed.
Swiftly dressed, he joined Arlin and the councilors in the parlour, where they ate scrambled egg and bacon and drank tea in tense silence. Then they collected their packs and walking sticks and swords—Arlin, swordless, eyed the weapons with a sneer—and made their way through the deserted, rain-drizzled streets of Gribley to the village’s outskirts, and the one Doranen mage living in the Black Woods.
Her cottage sat deep in the shadows of the mountains, a stone’s throw from the unremarkable beginning of the pass. Looking up and up the rocky, winding pathway, Rafel felt the weight of the cliffs and crags, their brooding silence, pressing down hard enough to break his bones. Felt the pain of their climbing in him as though he’d already begun. Felt clammy fear, and a brutal, savage doubt.
And then he felt Arlin’s considering, scornful stare. That was the only encouragement he needed.
Forget it, Lord Garrick. I ain’t turning back.
Phena, the pass keeper, was wizened and white-haired, her thin bent body wrapped in a dark blue wool tunic. Charged with husbanding the warding hexes that prevented any unsanctioned crossing of the mountains, rumour had it she could kill a man where he stood with nowt more than a word. One look in her deep-set, pale green eyes and Rafel believed the rumour, absolutely.
“So,” she said, standing in her open doorway and staring her visitors up and down. Her voice was cracked with age. “Five more brave fools, I see.” She smiled. “Welcome to Gribley.”
“We’re on Council business,” said Arlin, close to contempt even though she was Doranen. “Let down the wards so we can be on our way.”
Rafel flicked Rodyn’s boorish son a look, as Tom and the others shuffled, displeased. “Arlin—”
But Phena wasn’t offended. “You’re Asher’s son,” she said, ignoring Arlin. “Rafel. Last saw you as a babe in arms. You take after your father. I’m sorry he’s dying.”
With an effort, he managed a polite smile. “Thank you, Lady Phena. It’s true he’s poorly, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. Please—you’ve been the park keeper here for many years. What d’you know of the mountains?”
Phena laughed. “Many years? Yes. I was already old when Tollin and his men crossed over. I was older still when the few who survived the journey came back, walking dead men. And I was ancient when Sarle Baden ordered me to let him go by.” She sniffed, staring at Arlin. “Just like you, little lord. The same tone of voice. The same inflated conceit. They’ve not returned. I think it’s likely they won’t. The mountains are hungry. That’s what I know.” Another sniff. “How desperate is the Council, to feed them more men?”
Arlin’s face tinted with temper. “I haven’t ridden all this way for a lecture. Lower the wards, woman.”
“Ah,” said Phena, with a wrinkled-eye wink. “D’you hear him, Rafel? D’you hear him, good sirs? I expect this is why you Olken don’t have much time for us.”
Rafel offered her a respectful nod. “Lord Garrick’s not got the manners of a rutting boar, but—it is true we need to be on our way.”
She looked the five of them up and down again, taking in their oiled coats and their broad-brimmed leather hats and their bulging rucksacks and their long, stout sticks. The swords strapped across every back, save Arlin’s.
“Barl’s mercy on you, young mages,” she said softly. “Though I must warn you—in her mountains, mercy is hard to find.”
The damp air sizzled as she ignited four scarlet sigils. Rafel felt a crawling pressure against his skin, felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Heard Arlin’s breath catch in his throat.
Phena raised one thin grey eyebrow. “So what are you waiting for? The way is clear. Off you go.”
With a smile of thanks, not looking at Arlin or Tom and the others, Rafel crossed the lowered warding…
… and the journey began.
Within moments of them crossing the unwarded threshold onto the pass, Arlin pushed by Rafel and took the lead. The weathered path they followed, marked with Doranen hexes to guide the way, was too narrow for anything other than single-file tramping. Rafel didn’t care. He had nothing he wanted to share with Arlin, and no spare breath for conversation anyway. Glancing over his shoulder at Tom and the other two councilors, he saw they’d let themselves drift back, just far enough to suggest they were in a group of their own. Just far enough so their panting, whispered comments couldn’t be overheard. Uneasy, he fixed his gaze between Arlin’s shoulder-blades and wished he didn’t feel quite so twitched.
Are they going to be trouble? I bloody hope not.
The going was brutal tough, hexmark to hexmark, down and up scrawny, sideways-scraped gullies, over fallen trees and tumbled rocks, scrambling for purchase up sheer, rain-slippery cliffs leaving bits of skin and fingernail behind. Slowly, grindingly, the mist-shrouded village of Gribley dwindled behind and below them.
The mountains’ silence was oppressive. Disapproving. As he climbed, Rafel could almost believe the ancient mass of rock and soil might in any heartbeat shrug, disdainful, and toss them downwards to their deaths. Though the Wall had fallen before he was born he could feel its tattered remnants buried in its bones. Echoes of a power he could hardly begin to understand. Echoes that reminded him of what he’d felt in Barl’s Weather map, in her Weather Chamber, so far away now in Dorana City.
And he could feel other echoes, too. The black touch of Morg’s blight, that had brought her miraculous Wall to ruin. That had ruined the reef, and even now tried to ruin Lur.
The cloying darkness made the climbing so much more difficult. Especially with Arlin Garrick leading the way. It seemed the Doranen was ignorant of Lur’s struggle or Morg’s filthy legacy. Every time he had to stop and catch his breath, not because he was a weakling, but because what he could feel in the mountain threatened to press him flat, Arlin muttered and rolled his eyes with contempt, and never once held out a helping Doranen hand. Even Tom, Nib and Hosh looked at him askance after a while, ’cause they couldn’t feel it either. At least not the way he could.
He was starting to think there was something to be said for being ordinary.
After nigh on ten bruising, blistering, rain-drizzled hours, stopping only twice to eat, drink and relieve themselves, with the first day’s light fast fading and what had been a constant drizzle threatening to turn into proper hard rain, Rafel called for a halt—and the others didn’t argue. They’d reached a decent place to camp for the night. Not a cave, exactly, but a wide, shallow scoop in the mountainside that left just enough wiggle room for them to escape the worst of the weather. To pretend, on this first night in the wilderness, that they had a safe roof over their heads.