“Let’s just say my guild didn’t approve of every last experiment I undertook in my younger days,” Ulma said. “The guilds control the better part of Dunwarr society – fall out with a guild and it’s usually best to hit the road.”
“And that’s how you ended up joining us?” Logan wondered aloud. Ulma’s reply was cut short by Durik, who clearly already knew the tale.
“The guards outside Kathryn’s chamber will change soon,” the orc said, finishing off his soup. “I am going to join the new watch. I don’t want to leave Carys alone near Kloin for any length of time.”
“You sure you’ll be safe here while we’re gone?” Logan asked.
“Yes, I’m sure the veteran Broken Plains tracker needs the geriatric human vagabond to keep him safe,” Ulma chuckled. Logan scowled.
“Pay no thought to me, little rogue,” Durik said, smiling. “I’m not the one riding north with a wild clansman to hound a witch from her lair.”
Chapter Fifteen
They rode north the next day. Logan almost considered not going. His body felt broken, and the encounters in Blind Muir and his meeting with Ronan had drained him emotionally. How stupid he had been, to imagine any of this would be like it once was. How stupid to forget how difficult and desperate it had all been in the first place. But when he started making his excuses to Ulma, he couldn’t make them add up to himself, let alone her. All that was left to do was admit he was a sad, spent old man, and Kellos burn his eyes if he ever did that.
“You can take word back to Baroness Adelynn,” Ulma said as she packed fresh tinctures into her smock. “Tell her everything we’ve seen and found up here. I’m sure she’ll be willing to unbind your oath when she hears about what we’ve all been through.”
She was only trying to be helpful, but it annoyed Logan. He’d had enough help lately.
“Damhán will have sent enough messengers to keep the baroness informed,” he said. “You’re not giving up, Durik’s not giving up, so I won’t either. Besides, I’m not letting you go north on your own with that barbarian.”
“Think I can’t handle the big ones?” Ulma grinned. Logan chuckled.
The big one in question met them outside the castle stables. He was mounted on Durik’s black stallion, the hefty beast looking altogether regular-sized with the clansman on his back. His red-furred familiar was perched behind him on the back of his saddle, looking somewhat unimpressed by the mode of transport.
“Well met, friends,” Ronan called heartily as Logan and Ulma approached. The latter had her stocky pony, Ransom. Logan retrieved Ishbel, fondling the horse’s nose and patting her neck reassuringly. He’d missed her.
“How long before you dig back your heels and give us the slip then, Ronan?” he asked as he mounted up with some effort beside the northerner. Ronan laughed, the sound drawing glares from the men-at-arms on the walls overlooking the stables.
“Oaths might count for little for a crafty man like you, but they are more than life and death for the clans. They are reputation itself, and reputation is everything. Besides, I would not have abandoned the daughter of Maelec Morr if I intended to make good my escape. Her father will not act rashly while he knows I am still on the hunt.”
“Not going to ride back to the Redferns and tell them we’ve got her locked up and it’s time to burn the town down?”
“And appear before Maelec Morr without his heiress? I would like to keep my head for a little while longer!”
The northerner accompanied his words with a heavy slap on Logan’s back, nearly unhorsing him.
“Who would have imagined this day?” the man continued, voice booming. “Ronan of the Wilds joining with the Borderlands Four, off to slay a witch!”
“The Borderlands Four is currently the Borderlands Two,” Logan pointed out.
“Off to slay a witch,” Ronan repeated, grinning.
“We’ll see about the slaying part. The most important thing is to find Lady Kathryn. Fortuna knows, she’s led us on a merry chase so far.”
“Find the witch and we will find her. By all the gods may it be so!”
• • •
They rode north. If Logan had thought the grim forests and stony fields that surrounded Fallowhearth were bleak, he gained a new appreciation for the word on the first day of travel. It seemed half the houses in Fallowhearth as they rode out were now boarded up, but Logan found himself soon missing even their inhospitable presence. By late afternoon any remote sense of cultivation or civilization had given way to sweeping heath and moorland. In the rugged, featureless expanse of heather and peat, only the pinnacles of the Dunwarrs provided a point of reference. The track they followed – though Logan considered the word far too grandiose – was little more than a vague trail leading between heather and particularly swampy areas of low ground.
They camped the first night on a small, rocky plateau that seemed infested with a billion minuscule flies. Mij, Ronan called them, claiming they were drawn to the flames of the fire. Logan strongly considered stamping it out – he batted at them in vain all night, infuriated by the itching sensation caused by their bites. Eventually he resorted to wrapping his whole head in his cloak, but even that didn’t seem to stop them. Ronan, his huge arms bared, appeared not to mind them, and laughed heartily at Logan’s obvious discomfort. The creatures seemed to avoid Ulma altogether.
“Skin’s too thick,” she quipped.
The second day added a dramatic flourish to the surrounding landscape. The moorland rose up into steep-sided glens, purple and dark brown, the colors brilliant in the cold sunlight that broke through around midday. Ronan sang a song as he rode, something in his native Goltacht, a steady, strong ballad that Logan took to be an ode to the foothills they now traveled through.
“A fine sight, is it not?” he asked as they crested a rise, the rugged terrain laid out before them.
“It’s a little bleak,” Logan said.
“You should see further east,” Ulma pointed out.
“I was born near here,” Ronan said. “Not far to the east.”
“You were born inside Upper Forthyn’s borders?”
“As were many of my kin. You southerners never seem to realize how common it is. My mother was from Strangehaven. She met my father at the markets in Frostgate. The blood of the baronies is as strong as the blood of the clans in my veins. Many can say the same. I have always believed we are one people.”
“Is that why you became a… negotiator?” Logan asked, forgetting the proper name.
“Fìrinn Bruidhinn,” Ronan said helpfully. “Yes, in part. My parents left my tribe when I was young. We often traveled between the clans and Forthyn. I grew accustomed to north and south at an early age. I even served for a while in the Forthyn militia. That is where I earned my aon buaidh.”
“What’s that?”
“It would be like… my first glory, or triumph. My band were hunting lawless cattle thieves, out on the eastern border, beyond the banks of the Lothan River. We encamped near a system of caves we believed the rustlers were using as a hideout. As it turned out, something else had already claimed it, and them. That night a storm rose up. After we took shelter we were attacked.”
“By what?” Logan asked, drawn irresistibly into the northerner’s tale. He caught Ulma rolling her eyes, clearly far less enchanted.
“Deep elves,” Ronan said. “Vicious, heartless creatures. White-fleshed and half blind. They took most of the militia as captives. I was absent when they struck. When I returned I pursued them into the deeps. Eventually I was able to free all of my friends, along with a few of the cattle thieves the elves had taken.”
“Then witches are easy pickings for you?” Logan asked, half joking, half hopeful. Ronan laughed.
“We will see. I am sure you have faced worse than I down the years!”
“Well, I don’t like to brag,” Logan sai
d.
“He really does,” Ulma added.
“We shall make a story worthy of the bards,” Ronan said confidently, urging his horse down into the next sweeping glen.
• • •
That night they encamped in a sparse, woody outcrop overlooking a small brook that wound its way between the hills. Here at least the damnable insects which infested the undergrowth seemed less prevalent. It had grown colder, though, a northerly wind tugging at the last few gold and brown leaves clinging to the branches above them.
Ronan entertained them for much of the evening with epic stories of life as a Fìrinn Bruidhinn, wandering between the clans and the baronies. Logan couldn’t help but be drawn in by Ronan’s adventures too. The clansman was, among other things, an excellent storyteller.
“It seems strange to me, sitting here around the kin-fire with Logan Lashley and Ulma Grimstone, and not hearing their own adventures,” Ronan said eventually. “Come, enough of my foolishness! Tell me, what is your homeland like, Logan Lashley?”
Ronan insisted on using his full name, despite having been told that Logan was fine – he assumed it was some sort of clan thing.
“I don’t really remember,” Logan admitted. “I left when I was young and haven’t been back a great deal since. I have… quite a few debts in Summersong that I’d rather avoid.”
“Then where do you call home?” Ronan asked. “Even the Wandering Clans have their native glens.”
“I have a townhouse in Greyhaven,” Logan said. “A fine city, if you can stand the scholars at the university, but I like the bustle. And a country hall, Sixspan, on the borders of the Greatwood. It is a beautiful place. Lush forests, fertile, rolling hills, gentle streams. I thought I had found peace there. Too much peace, as it turned out.”
Ronan laughed. “You have the heart of a northerner! Your soul cannot settle. You are a spiorad krith. A wandering spirit.”
“I’d rather hoped I would settle someday,” Logan said wistfully. “Wandering, in my experience, seems to bring with it rather a good deal of danger.”
“Danger is the forge of legends,” Ronan said. “Is that not so, Ulma Grimstone?”
“In my experience combining legends and danger adds up to a high body count,” Ulma said. “I don’t think I’ve done a single thing for the sake of glory. Not many Dunwarr can say that.”
“Your work is what drives you,” Ronan said sagely.
“Consumes, more like,” Logan said, looking at Ulma through the flames of the campfire.
“It’s what I live for,” the dwarf said unapologetically. “Alchemy is a path to countless powers and abilities. I could perform a dozen acts before the sun sets today that most people in Terrinoth would call miracles of the gods.”
“But it isn’t the power you crave,” Ronan hypothesized. “It’s the excitement of each new discovery. That is what you enjoy the most.”
“How you haven’t blown yourself into little bits yet is beyond me,” Logan said.
“There’s time yet,” Ulma said. “The only thing more exciting than mixing up a new concoction is actually testing it.”
“It is a great boon, to have knowledge such as yours,” Ronan said. “I hope we will see a display of your power before we part ways.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Logan said. “Or you’ll have bits blown off you too.”
Ulma let that one go. They lapsed into silence for a while, Logan gazing into the flames, listening to the wind rattling the branches above them. In truth, such sudden bouts of introspection left him feeling morose. He found himself wondering what his life would have been like had he settled down sooner. What if he had overcome that adventurous itch, took on honest employment? Would he still have won the comfortable life he had enjoyed at Sixspan Hall? Would he be more than just an old man living in a secluded manse, reminiscing about the sorts of adventures he was now so desperately attempting to relive?
“It must be lonely, the duties of a Fìrinn Bruidhinn,” he said eventually, trying to ease his mind off his own resurgent unhappiness. To his surprise, Ronan let out a chuckle.
“I have a partner with the Bluestone clan, Morghelm the Swordspinner,” he said. “Truly, he is a king among men.”
“Do you see him often?”
“No,” Ronan admitted. “But he has his own duties to attend to. He is the Bluestone’s warrior-champion. Clan feuds are settled through his martial prowess.”
“Sounds fearsome,” Logan said.
“He is,” Ronan said, smiling into the flames. “I am truly blessed by the gods. And besides, when I am not with him I am too busy to be lonely, Logan Lashley. These glens make for good company.”
“You sound like Durik,” Ulma commented.
“The famed pathfinder? I saw him when I left the castle, but I would like to meet him properly someday. Carys Morr told me much of him.”
“I’m sure you could spend days talking about deer tracks or the different fauna of northern trees,” Logan said.
“I hope so. But what about you? Do you have a loved one waiting for you in your western hall?”
“I’d hate to have to share the wealth I’ve risked my neck assembling down the years,” Logan said. He laughed, but it sounded as hollow as he felt. Ronan looked at him with an expression that bordered on pitying.
“As you said, we all have things which drive us,” Ulma said. “I suppose those same things also tend to drive us away from settling down with a spouse and children.”
“You do not wish for heirs?” Ronan asked, sounding puzzled.
“I’m not sure I would have been best qualified to be a father in my younger days,” Logan answered, voicing the unhappy truths that had started to creep up on him. “And now, well…”
“The fates work in strange ways,” Ronan said, nodding. “What can any of us do but travel the path ahead?” They lapsed once more into silence, before Logan broke it.
“It’s late,” he said. “And I assume we won’t want to reach your Crooked Tower during the hours of darkness, Ronan. We should leave with the dawn and hope to arrive as early as possible.”
“I agree,” Ulma said. “You should both sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dawn came, cold and gray. A mist clung about the valleys between the high sides of the glens, leaving the scattered trees and undergrowth thickly beaded with dewdrops. Logan awoke stiff and damp. Ronan had taken his part of the night watch, letting him sleep. He was long past feeling aggrieved about that sort of thing any more. They refilled their water skins in the stream nearby and continued northwards as a cold autumn sun slowly burned off the morning fog.
They spoke little as they rode. Logan’s thoughts were even more morose than before, lingering on his failure to find proper direction in life. Ronan had no more songs – a gloom seemed to have fallen not only over the small expedition, but over the land itself. The terrain round about became more like scrubland, the bushes sparser and the soil rockier. A brief shower passed over about midmorning, dampening Logan’s spirits further.
Around midday he set eyes on the Crooked Tower. It sat upon a crag rising up out of the surrounding moorland, a silent, dark sentinel framed against the titanic purple and white slopes of the Dunwarrs beyond. Its foundations were the squat, angular stonework of dwarven masons, while the upper parapets were like those of Fallowhearth castle, humanbuilt. Those latter works had fallen into disrepair, half tumbled down and jagged. The collapse of the upper masonry had left the whole structure leaning precipitously over the edge of the crag, earning it the name the clans knew it by.
“Looks about as inviting a place as any I’ve seen since I came north,” Logan said.
“Let us go,” Ronan said. “Every minute of daylight is precious.”
They rode towards the eminence. It had seemed small set against the great mountain ran
ge behind it, but the closer they got the higher it loomed and the more jagged its rocky mount seemed. Logan felt a chill creeping over them even before he reached its long, bent shadow.
“Last time I came here, I wasn’t assailed until I reached the bottom of the rock,” Ronan said as they reined in at the foot of the steep path leading up to the tower’s arching doorway.
“That’s good to know,” said Logan. “By the way, do your people believe in omens? Do you think any of your horses do too?”
He pointed at the base of the track. A dead horse was lying there, its carcass split and near skeletal.
“If I was an omen teller, then that would not be what worried me,” Ronan said, dismounting near the carcass. “What worries me is that there are fresh hoof prints leading to these remains. Fresher than the age this body suggests.”
“Another phantom steed,” Logan said. “And this one isn’t Lady Damhán’s missing one.”
“The tower’s curse,” Ronan murmured, dragging a clan amulet out from under his wool tunic and kissing it.
“Well, if it’s a premature aging curse, at least I won’t have long to wait before it puts me out of my misery,” Logan said with false cheerfulness, kicking his boots free of Ishbel’s stirrups. “You may have to wait a few minutes longer than me though, Ulma.”
The dwarf didn’t respond. She was still sitting atop her pony, Ransom, gazing up at the tower’s broken crown.
“There’s something moving up there,” she said. “Or there was a minute ago.”
“I’d hope so,” Logan exclaimed. “If we came all this way for an empty tower you’d be coming straight back to Fallowhearth with us, Ronan. Lady Damhán would be wanting words with all of us, and I’d rather you answered her than me.”
“The tower is not empty,” the northerner assured them. “Come, before the witch escapes.”
“Speaking of, is that the only entrance?” Ulma asked, pointing at the open archway of the main door, leering down at them like a cyclopean eye. Ronan hesitated.
The Doom of Fallowhearth Page 18
