Nightfall (Book 1) (14 page)

The puddles collected above the grass roots were quickly evaporated in the early heat, forming thin clouds above our heads. Luckily we were spared of any rain until the evening, when it came as a fine mist, though the sun set at the perfect angle to reflect off the droplets, causing a bright haze around us and making it difficult to see.

At noon on the fifth day of our journey we came to the first edge of the second, and last, stretch of forest before reaching the edge of our continent. The bright sunlight shone behind us across the golden fields, while the tall, slender trees ahead of us sparkled with dew, a telltale sign that the noonday heat had not penetrated into the shade of the forest. That evening we encountered our first group of passing travelers.

The forest path was narrow and wound sharply between the tightly-packed pines; the trunks and branches of the new trees were incredibly thinner and required much less space to grow than the great oaks of the Oihana. From a distance the clusters of pine needles appeared to be soft, but after riding through a few branches that hung into the path I found them to be otherwise. The greenery of the Northern Woods was brighter than the Oihana, but my native forest had a wider range of colors and the undergrowth was more bounteous; in the Northern Woods the forest floor was blanketed with the browned and fallen needles of the pine trees, which crunched at every step of the horses’ steady strides.

I rode next to Sendoa at the head of the party; the elf had his helm off and sat in a regal pose which he seemed to take on subconsciously; his gaze swept constantly across the forest before us. Sendoa’s horse perked its ears forward and Aitor immediately followed suit; I paid it no heed for they often turned their ears in the direction of even the smallest of sounds, but then my hearing picked up the far-distant drumroll of thundering hooves.

“Company,” I stated quietly. Wordlessly, the elf handed me a cloak and donned one identical to it. I draped mine over my shoulders and before I lifted the hood to cover my head, I looked back to see that everyone else in the group was doing the same. Alesander joined Sendoa in the lead and I fell back just behind them. I rested my hand on the hilt of my sword, letting its chill, steel presence calm me; my other hand rested lightly above the reigns, waiting for the newcomers to appear along the constantly winding path. The view through the opening of my hood was rather limited—the only direction I could clearly see being directly in front of me—and I was glad that the party was approaching from the direction we were headed, rather than from our rear. The group consisted of six men on dark horses; the middle two each led a pack horse and all of them were dressed completely in deep-purple attire.

We spread into single file as the group, who had done the same, passed us. I noticed that the man in the rear of their company kept staring at me from under his own drawn hood, and felt his gaze bore into my back until the trees had blocked me from his sight. As soon as they were out of hearing range I returned to the front with Sendoa and was able to ask a few questions; Alesander had already returned to his previous position in the troupe.

“Why were they wearing that color? And how are there so many humans without the borders of Caernadvall?”

Sendoa did not hesitate before giving his answers. “Those men are some of Zigor’s allies, though they do not report everything to him because they have their own ruler. The color of their robes is that of their overlord, or King.” Before I could ask the question, he said, “They personally have done no treachery to the free peoples, so we are not exactly at war with them, but rather we have a type of truce—for now.”

“Oh.” I saved for later contemplation the existence of groups of humans free of Zigor’s reign, before I said, “The man in their rear was staring at me until the trees blocked his view. Who all knows about the prophecy?”

“Did he now.” It was neither a question nor an answer, and I could not tell whether he found the news interesting, troubling, or worthy of no thought at all. Sendoa continued on in contemplative silence until Alesander called a halt for our evening meal, during which the two of them had a few words together. They spoke quietly enough that no one else could hear and eventually Koldobika joined in on their conversation.

Normally we would make camp right after dinner but that night Alesander announced that we would be traveling as far as we could before the sun set. Once back on the road Alesander and Sendoa took the lead and my sister and I followed directly behind them. The occasional word was shared amongst us, though as twilight approached and then
deepened, we all grew silent, keeping an eye out for other travelers. Hours after sunset Alesander finally called for a halt and we camped in a small clearing just on the far side of a thin line of trees bordering the road.

~ ~ ~

The next morning, we heard the distant, and unwanted—though not unexpected—drumroll of galloping hooves. The guards went to the back of our group and turned around, forming a line across the road with the other three of us in a line just behind them. The four elves in front pulled out their bows and prepared to shoot down the oncoming riders if the need arose.

The riders then came galloping around the bend and slid to a surprised and disorderly halt in front of us. “What is the meaning of this?” their leader asked, not bothering to conceal his fury. Koldobika silently scanned the group, then he and Alesander exchanged glances.

“Where is the sixth man of your company?” the elf asked.

“He left us when we dropped our cargo off at its destination,” the man answered hesitantly. Understanding dawned in his eyes as he noticed me in the back of the group. “Ah, your prophesied deliverer has come.” After a moment longer of scrutinizing me, he added mockingly, “I thought he was claimed to be a being of Lordly presence.”

“Your King was not so different,” Koldobika pointed out, and an annoyed look crossed the other man’s face.

“If you have no quarrel with us then will you let us pass? We are still on duty,” the man said. He looked at me again. “And it seems our liege has a prominent choice to make. Can you tell us what amount of time we have to make a decision?” Alesander shook his head but had our group clear to the side in acknowledgment of the man’s request to let him and his
company pass. Everyone moved—except for Koldobika, that is. The wizard remained in the middle of the road, an intimidating roadblock. “What was the destination of the other man in your company?” he asked.

“He was not one of ours; he reports directly to Zigor.” Koldobika led his horse off the road, bowing his head in gratitude for the information. The leader also inclined his head as he passed Koldobika, his four men trailed behind him in a more orderly fashion than they had halted. Once past our group they eased their horses back into the mile-consuming gallop and soon all that was left of them was some dust that spiraled back to the ground.

“What happens now that Zigor knows where I am?” I asked, though as soon as I had spoken, the words seemed to be eaten up in the silence around us.

Shortly the wizard broke the silence which had grown increasingly uncomfortable. “He will only know within the week the general direction in which you were heading yesterday—and things change. We will be long gone before he can get anyone over here.”

~ ~ ~

We were no longer on the forest road and ahead of us the dirt path we followed came to a fork; one
sign indicated that in its direction we would find a fishing village, while the other simply said: Danger, Cliffs. We took the first option and eventually came to the village; its only permanent inhabitants were elves and I was glad to find that the place did not stink as much of decaying fish as I had expected. My companions had told me that seaside villages were supposed to smell horribly of the carcasses of sea creatures. The cottages all had clean, white-plastered walls, and thatched roofs. The sun shone brightly and was not scorching hot, but just warm enough that the salty breeze coming up from the ocean was perfect. If I listened carefully, I could hear a distant sound a bit like thunder.

As soon as we arrived in the village we found the only inn and made arrangements for a single night there; we would be moving on, the following day, to the seashore itself. I was excited to see the sea for the first time—I had only ever heard about it in detail from Koldobika’s stories told back in Caernadvall and the only time I had viewed it was in the directions Alaia had scried to me, though that was nothing more than a blur of color.

~ ~ ~

As the sun rose into the clear sky the next day, my companions and I, with our horses and newly-bought supplies, left the small village and headed off along a well-used dirt path. Thick grass grew along the road and a perfect shelter for small animals which we occasionally heard scampering away through the foliage. To the Southeast the forest and grasslands merged together, in the Southwest the grass grew for as far as the eye could see, but about a mile away to the Northwest the ground seemed simply to end. The grasslands to the Northeast were eventually disturbed by a line of trees which had a thick screen of vines growing along and between them and so blocked the view of anything beyond.

The path led East for a while, but eventually turned a little to the North; as we reached the place where the path led into the shade of the tree line Alesander called us to a halt. “We will continue from here in single file, slowly.” Then to me he said, “There will be steep places, so just keep your upper body vertical and you should be fine.”

Alesander led us through the trees and down the side of a ravine; Koldobika followed Alesander and then the rest of us made up the line of riders with three short-term pack horses added to the one we already had. The trees with their screen of vines continued along the entire length of the descending dirt path. As we neared the bottom of the ravine the sound of distant thunder that I had first noticed at the village grew steadily more pronounced. When the path finally leveled out, the constant booming of thunder was almost deafening.

As we emerged from the trees and seemingly inescapable vines, we came onto a twenty-foot-wide rock ledge which dropped down to the icy seawater of a fjord. The rocky, mountainous peninsulas to each side of the fjord stretched out into the sea like the huge fingers of a giant trying to scrape away the floor of the ocean. I realized then that the deafening sound of thunder actually came from the waves beating against the stone of the ancient mountains, which stood firm in the path of the ocean’s fury. A wall of icy, white, sea spray shot thirty or so feet into the air directly in front of me and a wave of energy washed over me, making my skin tingle. As the wall of spray fell, some of it reached our company and we were sprinkled in ice-cold droplets. “How can there be magic in the water?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Koldobika replied, intrigued.

“Whenever there is magic around me I can sense it; each person’s,” I thought for a moment, trying to think of an applicable word and finally found one, “aura—I guess—is a little different. The magic from the sea is much stronger than any I have sensed before.”

“Interesting,” the wizard murmured and I could not help but wonder what type of questions he had brewing.

“Keep moving,” Alesander reminded us all. The ledge continued to lower as we continued toward the place where we would be getting our ship. At the place where the two peninsulas connected to the mainland there was a large cove; the rock seemed to have been quarried for the ground was flattened out from the rigid base of the mountains to the edge of the water. There was a line of stone buildings at the back of the space, each with a various purpose relating to ships, or for housing the people who worked about the place.

On the seaward side of the small settlement was a shipyard that held two ships, currently under construction, and each at a different level of completion. The first was a mere skeleton and the other looked as if it needed only to be painted and then it would be sent on its maiden voyage. Beyond the shipyard was a huge pen, protected on the far side by a set of massive storm gates which were usually used to protect seashore cities from raging storms coming in from the sea. The storm gates were at least ten feet thick and made of a special stone able to withstand the constant battering of the powerful seas. From where the storm gates met the mountains, it was another ten feet up to the ledge where the road was, that we had just come down, and from there the towering cliff continued to rise.

At the sides of the pen, two long wooden docks stretched from the storm gates to where the cove floor dipped below the water at an easy slope so that a newly constructed ship could easily be slid into a berth, or a damaged ship could be pulled onto land for repairing. Two huge constructions made of stone and wood rose from the large stretch of flat ground between the buildings and shipyards; each construction was located directly in front of a berth. Down the center of the pen was another dock, though it was only just longer than the two moored ships. There were three ships’ lengths of empty space between the end of the middle dock and the storm gates, in which a ship could be maneuvered out through the gates or into a berth. Two completely seaworthy ships were moored in the berths, each a little different from the other though they still shared similarities.

I wanted to get a closer look at the ships, but Koldobika led us toward the small cluster of buildings opposite the direction I desired. With a quiet sigh, I nudged Aitor in the ribs and we followed the others across a stone courtyard toward the middle building. A man with a long, silver-streaked beard walked from the entrance to the house we approached, as the whole group dismounted in one fluid movement. Koldobika and the man greeted each other like long-lost friends, embracing and clapping each other on the back. The wizard then introduced each member of the party to the human, whom he called Garaile. The man welcomed us into his home for a large meal and our entire company gladly accepted. It seemed that all the others had been to this place before, as they were comfortably at ease and the meal was already being praised without even having made an appearance. When I entered the building a strong, yet pleasant, aroma swept over me, making my mouth water. Another pleasant note was that the thundering sounds that permeated the air of the cove seemed muted within Garaile’s lodge, giving my ears and head a respite.