by GJ Kelly
“Is that possible?” Gawain gasped, “Could more of those ancient wizards have survived south of the Teeth?”
Allazar shrugged. “I do not know, in truth. It is rumoured that such knowledge is contained deep in the bowels of the Hallencloister, and fat chance do any of us have of getting in there now. Not that it matters, with Salaman Goth destroyed and such others who might yet live now far to the west of the Eramak. For now, we must bring our news to the Council at Shiyanath.”
The wizard leaned forward, lamplight sparkling in his eyes.
“The importance of Jaxon’s story is in the picture he paints of the misery now inflicted on the Empire by wizards possessed of aquamire and using it for their own ends. Such a fate could still befall our lands if the dark armies of the north succeed in taking one of the gentler lands. Traitors there may well be amongst the brethren, but none are yet fuelled by aquamire and flapping around the skies on the backs of Graken. And therein lays the difference between our lands and the empire.”
Elayeen was stunned. “You think the Empire has already been conquered by Morloch?”
“In all but name, perhaps yes, and for as long as his minions fear him. From what Jaxon has described I would say that the provinces once ruled by powerful men and worked by slaves are now in Morloch’s hands, the Tals slaves themselves to dark wizards who by means of aquamire hold the lands in thrall. And a land in thrall is a land in which a plentiful supply of aquamire can be had, as Morloch discovered in the north millennia ago. The people in the provinces are penned by guardstones patrolled by creatures made by aquamire, penned as sheep in a coral, leaving the Emperor, it seems, hiding behind his walls shivering in the dark in spite of all his praetorians. That’s assuming the Emperor yet lives, and there are none in our lands who would know for sure, I think.
“It would not take many dark wizards with even a fraction of the power of a Salaman Goth to cow a great many people, lady Elayeen. Remember how the southlands were almost brought to their knees by the Ramoth, and that enemy employed no great powers beyond brawn and steel to spread fear far and wide. It is perhaps why Morloch’s strategy was so different between east and west. Slaves need handling with different gloves than a free people.”
“And having been kicked in the Teeth, Allazar, we can expect Morloch now to change his gloves?”
“Alas, Longsword, yes. Between the armies of the north and the darkening to the west, I fear the nature of the conflict with Morloch will change in ways we cannot yet imagine.”
“Thus the circles,” Elayeen said, a little sadly, though there was now no hint of sorrow for herself.
“Thus the circles,” Allazar agreed. “Tomorrow we begin our journey to Jarn, and thence to Elvendere. My friends, this may be the last night you both have the time and the opportunity to be together for some days to come. Who knows what awaits us on the road. I shall bid you good night, and retire early, for I have much to think about now that my head is my own once more.”
“Good night, Allazar.” Gawain said quietly.
“Good night.” Elayeen added, watching the bright shape of the wizard as he crossed the bar to disappear into his room.
“Come, miheth,” Gawain said softly. “Let’s take the wizard’s advice.”
“Yes.”
“Did I tell you that you were breathtaking today?”
“Yes. But I think I can manage to be breathtaking again before the dawn.”
oOo
15. Pinned
“The road to Jarn runs from here through the southern woodlands of Callodon,” Allazar explained to the Gorian refugees as they gathered by the wagons at the wells next morning. “It’s about, oh, a week’s ride or thereabouts, perhaps a little longer since we’re in no desperate hurry.”
“Will there be food and water?” a voice in the throng asked.
“I’m sure there’ll be good hunting along the way, and if nothing else, we can all look forward to some decent rabbit stew, of that I’m certain.” Allazar smiled across their heads at Gawain who stood quietly listening with Elayeen. “We also have the remains of our supplies here in the wagons as you can see. There’s room enough for the ladies in your party to travel in comfort, with a couple of spaces for the less stout amongst you.”
“We’ll take it in turns,” Jaxon announced, “Turn and turn about when we pause to water the horses,” and there were nods of agreement.
The day had dawned clear and cool, but the sea breezes had begun swirling and the wind seemed to be swinging slowly to the east, threatening a blustery afternoon if not a wet one to come. Gawain turned away from the crowd to check his pack and saddle, and then Elayeen’s, leaving Allazar and Jaxon to prepare the Gorians for travel. All around was bustle, quiet and determined and well-organised, the Callodon military contingent striking camp with practiced ease.
Elayeen stood holding her bow, her hands clasped about the weapon resting lightly on her right boot, broken fingers sticking out uncomfortably.
“You know, miheth, they’ve never seen an elfin before. You could sling the bow over your back and still be breathtaking. At least it wouldn’t strain your poor fingers.”
She smiled and her head swivelled towards Gawain. The way she looked straight forward and moved her head was still a little unsettling, made even more so by her near-invisible pupils. Even Gawain, with all his love for her, now found something a little unnerving in her steady gaze, something penetrating, which he felt hadn’t been there yesterday.
“My poor fingers received attention from Healer Turlock this morning, miheth. Everything else received attention from you last night.”
“Elayeen!” Gawain gasped in mock astonishment, emphasising the three syllables of her name, “By the Teeth, girl, have you no shame?”
She giggled happily. “None. Besides, there are none close enough to hear us.”
Gawain’s pulse quickened and he stared up at her standing on the boardwalk while he tightened the straps holding her cloak to the back of her saddle. “Is your sight clearer this morning then?”
Elayeen nodded. “I can see with greater detail now. Hands have fingers and are no longer simple blobs. Heads have their proper shape too now. Gingerbread men are becoming people of light and shade.”
Gawain held up his right hand, as if in greeting, and waggled his fingers. To his delight, Elayeen laughed. “Stop it, G’wain, people will think you are mad! Or worse, they will think you are taking advantage of your poor blind wife, with her poor broken fingers.”
At once, he snapped his hand down to his side and hurriedly glanced around. Then he chuckled, and after a final check of Elayeen’s packs and saddle, he sighed and climbed the step to stand beside her again, watching the bustle around them.
“If I ask you a question, do you promise not to laugh at me?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He chuckled again. “You’re impossible.”
“I prefer breathtaking, given a choice.” Elayeen smiled happily. “But what is the question G’wain? I’ll try not to laugh.”
“Well, I suppose that’ll have to do. I was just wondering, with you being able to see as you do, the light inside people?”
“Yes?”
“Can you see in the dark? I mean, could you see me, last night?”
Elayeen burst out laughing and then hastily covered her mouth, blushing furiously and turning her back to the throng.
“What? I mean it, why, what’s so funny?” Gawain protested dumbfounded.
“And you speak to me of shame!” she choked, desperately trying to stifle her laughter and keep hold of her bow at the same time. “G’wain you’re priceless!”
Gawain frowned, utterly confused, and then the penny dropped. “Not like that! I didn’t mean like that! I meant could you see someone in the dark, that’s what I meant! Shush! People are starting to look!”
Alas that only made Elayeen’s giggling worse, her slender shoulders heaving. Gawain’s horror turned to humour, his frown to a smile and then
a grin, and then he too chuckled and moved around to stand before his laughing love. He wrapped his arms around her as best he could with Elayeen still holding her bow, and gazed down into those beautiful, unsettling eyes.
Gawain sighed, and for a moment he thought his heart would burst from his breast such was his feeling of pride in her. “I wish…” he began, then stopped, and simply smiled at her.
Her laughter eased, and she beamed happily, and tilted her head slightly. “What, G’wain?”
“Nothing,” he said softly.
“Tell me. Who knows what awaits us on the road?”
“I wish…” he began again, and hesitated, and then said softly, fervently, “I wish we could have but one more moment of throth between us, so you would know, here and now, how much I love you, and how your courage in the face of all that’s dread fills me with such pride.”
She smiled again, and blinked, and cocked her head to the other side. “Silly boy,” she whispered. “I can see it in you now. I think I always have.”
“Ready to proceed when you are, my lord.” Tyrane called down the road from horseback at his position in the vanguard.
Gawain tore his eyes from Elayeen’s, glanced up the road to the captain and then across at Allazar, who nodded. “Very well,” he called back, waving, and with the clattering of hooves and boots on the cobbles of the Jarn road, the group began moving off.
“Come then, my lady, let’s away into the world once more.”
Elayeen, still smiling, allowed Gawain to guide her boot into the stirrup and then nimbly swung herself up into the saddle, settling herself on her horse while Gawain mounted Gwyn.
Gawain kept Elayeen to his right side until they’d cleared the wagons and the Gorians walking alongside them, and then eased ahead so she could draw up on his left, his right arm and the longsword giving her protection on the road. A few moments later, Allazar drew alongside Elayeen’s left, and the three rode side by side behind the head of the column, Tyrane and his two burliest and capable men riding vanguard, the sergeant taking charge of the rearguard.
A pair of riders had been sent ahead by two hours, and Tyrane had deployed his mounted troopers according to Gawain’s instructions. With so many people on foot, it would be a slow journey, quite unlike the hasty sprint across the plains from Ferdan.
Four hours later they paused at a passing-place on the road, a cobbled area each side of the main thoroughfare where larger wagons would have been able to pass around each other, the ruts in the road here frequently filled from heaps of gravel kept for that purpose at the woodland’s edge. Or so they would have been in the past. The ruts worn into the road from countless years of commerce needed no filling now. The troopers broke open crates and barrels, and doled out the meagre supplies to all except Gawain, who was of course content to eat frak once more.
During the group’s slow progress, spirits had been high. The cobbled road had given way to a broad and stony track barely a mile from the outpost, wagon-wheels had settled into the ruts, and horses and men settled into a steady trudging march.
The Callodon troops under Tyrane’s command looked happier to be away from the mountain and Raheen and heading back towards such civilisation as Jarn represented. The Gorians, though they had travelled far on foot already, were so much better fed than they had been, and free, and this seemed to them to make the miles so much lighter and easier to bear.
Allazar had been content to hum a quiet tune to himself along the way, and for a while Gawain was seriously concerned that the wizard had suffered a relapse into the half-world of the circle again, but a few quick glances past his lady eased his mind; Allazar was smiling to himself, happy to be on the road, and apparently content with the world.
Elayeen, though, had been restless with excitement, eyeing the woodland world around them as if for the first time. Her head had flicked this way and that, high and low, and occasionally she’d gasped with pure delight at the birds which flapped twittering and calling in alarm across the road ahead of them. Once, she exclaimed in wonder: “Oh! G’wain is that a fox? There in the bushes!”
Gawain had looked to the side of the track where she pointed, but saw only bushes, and said so, but before he had time to finish the sentence, he caught sight of a familiar red and bushy tail disappearing hastily into the undergrowth. “It was a fox, or so it seemed, behind the bushes,” he confirmed, astonished. Elayeen beamed, and carried on gazing all about her.
Gawain could only wonder what it was she was seeing, and where only recently he had felt ineffable sorrow at the blindness inflicted upon her by the circle, now he was beginning to suspect that the gift was much less of a curse than any of them had first imagined, especially given the look of joy on Elayeen’s face.
Now though, they stood quietly together, the three of them, ahead of the group and slightly north of the passing-place, Gawain with his frak, and his companions with the remains of sandwiches fresh-made that morning.
“Nyummff,” Allazar waved his towards the wagons and then swallowed before continuing, “Look, it seems the ladies in the Jaxon’s party have decided to walk.”
Elayeen stared hard towards the wagons, and then sighed. “Which are the ladies?” she finally asked, softly.
“They stand together in a small group beside the two horses drawing the lead wagon.” Gawain said. “Jaxon stands between them and us, and there are two guardsmen of Callodon standing quietly at the head of the horses to their left, our right.”
“Thank you, miheth.”
“I am sorry, my lady,” Allazar mumbled a contrite apology, “I had forgotten.”
“There’s no need,” Elayeen smiled, her gaze fixed upon the small group Gawain had described. “It is quite wondrous to be surrounded by so much life after the outpost. The whole world is sparkling and alive with light.”
“It’s difficult to imagine what you are seeing, E.” Gawain sighed.
At that, she smiled, and thought for a moment. “Think of all the trees and all the bushes and brambles and grass dusted with winter frost and glistening in the morning sunshine. Then imagine all the trees and bushes and brambles and grass suddenly gone, leaving just the twinkling frost. It is quite beautiful.”
Allazar nodded, his own expression mirroring the awe Gawain himself felt. “They say that the sight possessed by the Eldenelves was a wondrous thing in those elder days.”
“Why did it fade, Allazar?” Elayeen asked, “It must have passed into myth so long ago that even I hadn’t heard of it before.”
Allazar shrugged and swallowed another bite of his sandwich. “In truth, my lady, it is not known. Perhaps the reasons for its use faded, and like muscles not exercised, the ability weakened and was finally lost.”
“Then the Eldenelves had normal sight as well as this… other?” Gawain asked, hopefully.
“Yes,” the wizard confirmed, “And they were able to use that sight as we might focus near and then far. I have every reason to hope that in time Elayeen will regain her normal vision too. In elder tales, books speak of men ‘being pinned in the gaze of an elf’, while first the elf looked at you as other men do, and then upon your inner light. I imagine it could feel very unsettling, as though one were being judged.”
“Hmm.” Gawain muttered, remembering the slight disquiet he’d felt before they’d left the outpost.
“That is a lady, is it not, now stroking the horse’s head?” Elayeen asked, frowning.
“Yes, miheth, why, is something wrong?”
“Could you fetch Jaxon? I should like to ask him a question.”
“Do you see a shadow?” Allazar asked quietly, and a single sparkle of light fizzled briefly atop the staff he now held a little tighter.
But Elayeen shook her head, her face still puzzled. Gawain did as she bid, and moments later Simayen Jaxon stood before her, and he was clearly delighted to be so.
“My lady, how may I serve?”
Elayeen smiled. “The lady there, speaking with one of the guardsmen at th
e head of the horses?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Who is she?”
“Ah, she is Simayen Ameera. A weaver and planter. She was tythen to Daffyd, a leather-man, not long before we fled. Daffyd was killed on the journey, by that Grimmand creature.”
“Tythen?” Gawain asked.
“Yes,” and Jaxon laced his fingers together, “Tythen, together, a man and a woman.”
“Ah. Married. When a man and a woman are bound together.”
“Yes my lord. Tythen.”
“She is with child.” Elayeen stated as much as asked, her head tilting a little, her gaze still fixed upon the woman.
“That is her hope and belief, my lady.”
Elayeen smiled. “It is more than a hope or a belief, Serre Jaxon. She carries a light within her own. You must all take care of her, her child will be the first of you all born in the freedom of these eastern lands.”
Jaxon grinned happily. “We shall, my lady.” And with that, he took his leave, and hurried to tell Ameera, and then everyone else, the tidings.
“You should be careful, my lady,” Allazar smiled. “Or soon word will spread of a silver-haired elfin she-wizard and a great queue of women anxious for answers to the same question will beat a path to your door.”
“I will be careful,” she grinned, “But my biggest concern for now is getting back on my horse. The horse I can see, the stirrups I cannot.”
“Here, let me,” Gawain announced, walking with her to the steed.
“My king is becoming gallant.” Elayeen said softly, for his ears alone as he guided her boot into the stirrup.
“No,” he replied cheerfully, “Simply availing myself of every opportunity to dazzle you with my brightness. It’s a long way to Jarn and holding your pretty booted ankle is about all I can hope for between here and there.”
