The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2)

by Matthew W. Harrill

  Recovered slightly, Keldron stammered to agree with him, still frightened half witless by his friend. “They will never take it from us.” He finally managed to get out.

  The two friends stood and watched as the sun rose with the grace of a swan, gliding up beyond the mountains into the sky above. It had not gotten a hands-span above the mountain line when they heard a gravelly voice shouting for them. “Heh. Old Stroddick is hoping we aren't caught in a dream out here.” Raoul surmised. “He hates missing out.” Smiling at Raoul's remarks, Keldron followed his friend back into the house, hoping beyond hope that whoever those riders were, they had gotten far enough away to have not heard his large friend's early morning bellows.

  Inside the house, the mood was sombre. Everybody worked with efficiency in order to get his or her belongings packed. In thanks to the household, they also cleaned it as best they could. It would always be obvious that someone had been in this house, but they were not prepared to leave their temporary refuge in any state of disarray. The horses reflected their mood by acting skittish and playing up as Malcolm tried to feed, groom and saddle them for the next stage of their journey. They too knew that something had happened, and even stuck in the stable they were able to sense it. Still, a calm hand and sure touch settled most of them down, though they still rolled their eyes at the door. The time came when they were ready to leave, and Keldron shut the gate of the miller's house respectfully, thanking the departed soul for one night of respite from the physical elements at least. Dawn had now passed, and they rode through the village following the last traces of the mist along the side of the stream, which bubbled away joyfully, as if no spirit or emotion could quell its simple needs. They rode back towards the East, as by general consensus they wanted to head in the other direction than the horsemen had gone, at least for a while. The border of the village passed away, and with each retreating step they felt better. The horses calmed, and the day even warmed a bit, if it were at all possible to call the lack of a freezing breeze in winter 'warm'. At length they had reached a point far enough from the village that they were no longer troubled by the miasmic aura of the place, and it was only visible if one were to peer closely. The land was not completely flat, even here and the ever-so gentle roll of the slopes had hidden the terrible place from body and mind. Keldron decided that it was as good a time as any to turn North and West. And so they rode for the best part of the day, until a feeling started to nag at him.

  As Keldron stopped his horse, Belyn came riding up beside him. “What is it, brother?” he asked, still toying with the stone that gave out a glow and enabled them to see the spectres the night before.

  Keldron looked around them, for nothing seemed amiss. “I have a nagging feeling. We are being watched as we travel.”

  Belyn looked around them, causing the others to stare blankly at the slopes around which they travelled. “I can't see anything, are you sure?”

  “I am,” Keldron said after a moment's thought. “Belyn, lend me that stone if you will.” Belyn didn't hesitate in handing over his stone. Keldron examined it for a second, wondering if it would do as he wanted, and then pulled in his concentration and became one with the stone. Belyn watched as his friend performed whatever focus it was that he was attempting. “Anything?” he asked.

  Keldron's smile was all the answer they needed. “There is a large group of them beyond that rise to the east. There must be thirty or forty of them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Raoul smiled as if enraptured. “Belyn I can see them, I can see their auras. Belyn, they are tribesmen.”

  The look of surprise on Belyn's face was repeated on the faces of the four other riders. Quickly he turned and looked at Malcolm, who nodded briefly, and dismounted, striding off to the low hill with a great amount of urgency. The air cleared as Keldron relinquished his focus. “May I?” Belyn indicated the stone.

  Keldron nodded, still at peace with himself, and watched as Belyn attempted the same thing. “Look for what we sought last night, and you shall see something entirely different.”

  A moment passed before Belyn inhaled sharply. “Oh my,” the big man said. “I see what you mean. You can tell it's them by their very auras.”

  “Or is it their souls?” Raoul suggested.

  Belyn altered his focus. Keldron could feel Belyn as if he were in two places at once. Something touched them on a spiritual level. Belyn grinned, and opened his eyes. “Amazing. It's like seeing all of you in a new light.” Belyn looked around at them all. “You look so pure.”

  “What do you see?” Yerdu asked him, not sure what to make of herself.

  “You glow. Green if it is any colour, but it is an ethereal light. It shines from you all, right out through your skin and clothes. It accompanies you, and a trail is left when you move.” Belyn's eyes glazed, and Keldron felt the subtle magic of the focus dissipate. Belyn leered at Yerdu. “But you look much better in the flesh.”

  “Flatterer,” harrumphed Yerdu, letting Belyn enfold her in a hug.

  Belyn squeezed her momentarily, and let go, looking towards the rise. “They are on the way. They were moving when I viewed them.” He looked at the stone in his hand, and let out a laugh of pure delight. “What a little treasure we have there,” he said, smiling at everyone around him, and pocketed his stone. Keldron hoped that it always showed the better side of people, but wondered nonetheless if it could be used to determine a person's aura if they had not been touched by a forest's spirit. He did not voice that openly, for he wanted to give the thought more consideration. A flicker in the distance caught his attention, and Keldron looked on approvingly as Malcolm led a band of the tribesmen towards them. Unable to restrain themselves, Yerdu and Joleen jumped down from their horses and ran to the warriors, bestowing hugs and kisses to their extended family. The warriors reacted in their usual reserved way. As more and more of them rounded the rise, Keldron commented. “You were right, Belyn. And I am overjoyed to see this many of them in one place.” Belyn grunted in agreement, as if his focus-sight had never been in doubt. Malcolm approached, with none other than Seren and Handel, who greeted them with bows and the ritual greeting of the tribe.

  Returning the pleasantries, Raoul asked, “How did you find them all?”

  Handel shrugged, as if the question was pointless. “They were there, and we knew how to find them. They left signs.” He turned to look at the men and women with him. “There are more,” he volunteered.

  “What will you do?” Raoul asked.

  “What would you have us do, Law Wizard?” Handel asked in return. “We are yours to command, and we know of your wishes.”

  Raoul turned in his seat to his companions. The burden of responsibility was lying very heavily on his shoulders, and Keldron well knew it. Were he or Belyn to offer anything in the way of advice, that the burden would be passed to them, and it would do their friend some good to learn something new. This was Raoul's task. Sensing nobody was going to say anything to him, Raoul turned back to the questioning eyes of Handel. “Can you survive out here?”

  “It is not the forest.” It was not Handel, but Seren who replied, “But we were not always forest dwellers. We were once travellers of the land you call the Nine Duchies. We gave it a different name.” Seren looked off into the distance, as if he were searching for an answer in the sky above.

  “What was the name?” Raoul asked, ignorant of any other name that had been given to the countryside that he lived in.

  Seren turned back to him. The dark features of the warrior gave nothing away to indicate his thoughts. “We do not know. We cannot remember, else so much more of our past would we know. The name was lost in our history, but we are hoping that association with you, with all of you.” He indicated the three of them with a broad sweep of his arm. “We hope that we may find an answer, but for now we will do what is needed.”

  The answer was easy. They had discussed it at length the previous day. Raoul straightened in his saddle. “Search out v
illages in this region, and save their people. The feeling we encountered yesterday is so much more than an aura of ill, it was the spirits of the past, forced towards the next life, but struck in between by magic dark in nature. Something has left them there, stranded. It is our thought that whoever did this intends to do this to everybody, and wipe out the rural folk in this Duchy, and perhaps in others. Now I know that you suffer as greatly as we from the woe and agony that has left its imprint in the very Earth. I urge you to steel yourselves against it, for defy it you must. It may be that you have needs to enter such a place, and do not hesitate if the need is there. We cannot help those who have passed beyond, at least not for now. Ilia knows that if we find a method of healing their eternal torment, we shall use it. But we have to search, and that means that we have to seek out the island temple.”

  Seren glowed with pride as he listened to the words of Raoul, the Law Wizard. “It will be as you have commanded.”

  “No,” Raoul cut in sharply, “I have never presumed to command you, and I never shall. The Old Law runs as true in this as in any of its tenets. Commanding implies dominion of one over another, and I adhere to the Old Law. I have no dominion over you.”

  “But we give our service freely,” Seren insisted, reinforced by nods and murmurs of assent from the gathered tribe.

  “Hearken to my advice,” Raoul replied, determination written all over his face, “For advice it is only. There are those out here who may need you more than we will. Be true to them, for they are innocent, their only flaw being in the eyes of others. Be true to yourselves, for only in faith and devotion to the Gods and the Law will you prevail.” Keldron looked across at Raoul. The religious zeal with which he spoke these words was beyond the comprehension of the man who was speaking them. He talked as if augmented by some higher power. “Be true to the land, for it will aid you when you need it, as once the forest did. Be true to each other, for you will prevail as a group, even if not all of you do as individuals. Finally, be true to the forest and the memory of Merdon, for it shall always dwell in your hearts, and we shall be able to see you from afar. We shall always be watching.”

  At that, Raoul closed his eyes, and turned his horse to the West, riding off slowly. Keldron looked at the others. “Shall we?” he invited. A few brief hugs were all that there was time for, as Raoul already grew small in the distance.

  “You are ok with this?” Belyn asked of Seren.

  “We are,” Seren replied as Handel exchanged a few quiet words with Joleen and Malcolm. Seren reached up and clasped Belyn's hand, and then Keldron's. “You find the island, and solve your riddles. We will preserve the mainland while you are gone. They will not reduce these people to cowering slaves. The forest tribe shall see to that. Would you hearken unto a word of advice to you before you depart.”

  “Oh?” Keldron said, suddenly interested.

  “Look for our people along the way. Some of us have gone ahead, and do not know what the rest of us plan. Advise them, and let them make their own choices. There is more now at stake than the finding of an island and the upholding of our ancient traditions. Something new seeks to disturb the balance of the very land we walk upon. We can tell that much as we walk the turf and touch the leaves.”

  Keldron watched the tribe as it departed. Already there were but ten of them left. “We will do our part, as I am sure that you will do yours,” he said gravely, “until we meet again under Merdon's green boughs.”

  “Until then, wizard.” Said Seren, and they departed, merging with the grass and bushes as if they were born to become one with all around them.

  Keldron looked back to their own path. Raoul had already disappeared completely. “We should catch him.”

  Belyn grinned, exhilaration showing behind his ruddy beard, as if he were a mirror of the sun beating back its magnificence at the glow in the cerulean sky. “We have a long way to go, my companions. There is no time like the present!” And filled with anticipation of what they had to do, the five of them rode after Raoul at a joyous gallop.

  Chapter Four

  Bay's Point had begun its existence as a smugglers port, base to only the pirates that were desperate enough to endure the frigid winds and ripping tides that scoured the coast on their way down from the arctic North. For generations it had been nothing more than an undisturbed ramshackle of warehouses, piers and hovels with not even a tavern to keep them warm. Instead pirates and bandits infested what was no bigger than a coastal hamlet sought their ale and treasures by a different method. They would quest out in their sleek corsairs, and raid the more substantial settlements to the South and East, sometimes travelling as far as the other side of the great bay, or even, when times were desperate, across the sea to the great forest villages of the distant island to the West. Always too late, the authorities of these various targets would send their own fleets after the brigands, but they would never find them. Countless vengeance raids by the authorities on the settlement would reduce it to cinders an almost infinite number of times over the seasons, but the colony endured. Always within a couple of turns of the moon, there would be a fresh raid, and the furious and frustrated crews would arrive at the mouth of the Boarsrushflow to bear witness to the fact that not only had the settlement reappeared, but it had prospered. The regenerative power of both Bay's Point was incredible. It stood defiantly in the face of the logic that dictated to the surrounding villages that once they destroyed the place, it would no longer grow back. The area was simply too deserted and the surrounding land sparse. Not much more than a thin acidic soil clung to the coastal rocks to each side of the river, so crops could not grow, and herds could not graze. Therefore there were no farms to sustain the populace. Even so, the other coastal villages had not reckoned on two things. Firstly the resourcefulness of the brigands, and secondly that the river had to lead from somewhere. The stupefying fact was that every time Bay's Point was raided in revenge for an act of piracy, they never once saw or found any trace of the ships. The buildings were always empty, and were ransacked out of sheer frustration. They never found out until much later on that there was actually a thriving village to the North, just up around the point of the coast from which the pirates took the name. In fact, the true Bay's point had always been a small cove, protected by a magnificent natural breakwater, where weak rock had been eroded away and left a gap two ships wide through a deep vertical cleft in the cliff. One could have sailed straight past it for seasons unending and never noticed the entrance, so great was the natural concealment. The pirates enjoyed a life of luxury and protection in their true home, while the decoy settlement took repeated damage. It was a simple case of making the crossing overland and rebuilding the settlement with wood harvested far upstream. This was their other secret. Many of the coastal towns and villages were very provincial, preferring their own company, and only visiting to other towns on the rarest of occasions. That preferred isolation also spread to the interior of the land, and rural folk rarely ever saw a 'squab', or 'coast-hugger', as they were called in suspicious derision on the occasions such folk met. The Bay's Point brigands, aside from the crimes they were responsible for on the coasts and high seas, were also merchants, negotiators and adventurers. They revelled in the exploration of the land behind them, and had very early on made contact with the settlements along the river not for plundering, but for trade. In this time, generations before the Nine Duchies, the rivers were where farmers and rural folk gravitated towards, and the early merchants made the most of this. The Boarsrushflow danced and ebbed along what would eventually become the natural boundary between the Lower Uporan Steppes, and the northernmost reaches of an embryonic Ciaharr. If folk wanted to trade, they came to the river. In its early days, the only use the brigands had for the village at the river's mouth was as a store point for goods to be transported by boat upstream to various markets. It was true that the merchants knew what they were, but they never questioned the motives or the source for the goods. Rarities were novel to the rural folk, and the bri
gands were the primary source. For their part, they traded honestly. They had no need to bargain outrageously, for they were in as desperate a need for the staple goods the farm folk had on offer as the farmers were for their bolts of cloth or rare gemstones. All in all, a wary but gradually burgeoning friendship grew between the two communities. The farming spread down the river, and eventually, the two communities became one. The natural midpoint was the false village, and this became a place of business. The brigands still raided across the great bay, but their secret was safe. The farm folk adopted the village at the mouth of the river as their own, and soon it became a prosperous town. This was mainly due to the amount of traffic that passed down river bearing goods of all sorts. Food, sundries, rarities, all came to the main focal point through the smaller villages upriver. Word eventually spread that Bay's Point was not just a pirates' hovel, and the other coastal villages began to take note. The pirates still raided, and every small armada that sailed towards the town in revenge had to turn back when they realised that they could no longer raze to the ground what had once been a ramshackle collection of warehouses. This became final when out of nowhere within the space of a moon, an immense breakwater sprang out to either side of the river mouth, creating a massive harbour. This was the time when Bay's Point really became a city in its own right. It was also the time of the formation of the Nine Duchies, and while other more foolish men were leading campaigns to the ice plains, the pirates installed their own self-styled 'Duke', a rather unsavoury fellow called Skull. This man did nothing much for the city, but the men behind him knew about the power a city-state held over a region, and the canny brigands also knew that a city at the mouth of a river bisecting two major regions would also become a key focal point. So they planned ahead. They erected two great walls of stone a ways out from the settlement, to allow for the expansion they were sure would happen. The North wall was not a great deal, for there was nobody from whom the citizens needed protection, and the pirates' own village was the only real settlement up the coast. The Southern wall, though East would be a more accurate direction, was a different matter. The pirates employed stonemasons to erect a mighty fortification ten times as high as a man, and three times as thick as a house. This protected the city from the coast to the river in a gradual arc. It had immense wooden gates, and was considered impenetrable, mostly because rarely anybody had the resources to mount an attack on it. Only once did this happen, and the man behind it was hung on a gibbet outside the city to show others what would happen to them if they tried.