Shroud of Eternity

CHAPTER 66

The D’Haran army rode out of the mountains into the broad green valley that had once been the Scar. Sitting astride her horse, Prelate Verna looked ahead, scanning the landscape. After days of riding, she had named her horse Dusty, an endearing as well as descriptive term; Richard had taught her to name, and respect, her horse.

“Do you think we are almost to Cliffwall?” asked Sister Amber. Her eyes were sparkling. “I never knew the world was so vast.”

“You still have seen only the tiniest portion of it, child.” Verna was surprised by the ever-widening vistas. What if even the sweeping D’Haran Empire was just a small country in a continent of inconceivable size?

The young novice looked amazed, then briefly skeptical, but she gave a solemn nod. “I would never doubt you, Prelate.”

Oliver and Peretta, riding together on the same horse, gazed ahead of them. “We have to go around the valley to the north, then up into the high desert to find Cliffwall.” Oliver squinted, but could not seem to make out the details.

Peretta added, “We camped exactly eight times from Cliffwall to this point. But riding on horseback is much faster.”

General Zimmer held the reins of his black destrier and glanced back at the two young scholars. “That means we should be only days away.”

They followed a blurred trail, portions of which had once been a road, but much had weathered and washed away. The horses followed the gentle geography where streams had cut down to the valley.

“It looks like a beautiful place,” Verna said. “Wild and pristine.”

“The Lifedrinker’s mark is almost entirely erased,” Peretta said. “Look at the meadows, the new forests, the rivers and lakes. The valley is alive again.”

“I would not thank Victoria for what she did,” Oliver said.

As they rode into the twilight, they saw a sparkle of lights ahead, dozens of small fires. Worried that it might be an army encamped in the valley, General Zimmer dispatched scouts to investigate, and they rode back in the dark to say that the fires were the camps of settlers, people who had moved in and begun to build new homes and farms.

Rather than approaching the settlement, the general ordered that they bed down for the night where they were. He scratched the rough stubble on his cheek. “We’d terrify those poor people if a hundred armored riders arrived after dark. Let us wait until morning so we can come in as visitors, rather than invaders.”

After giving Dusty a withered apple for a treat, Verna lay on her blanket, listening to the night birds and insects. The Sisters of the Light camped close together, spreading out their bedrolls. They talked excitedly, knowing their destination was at hand. The soldiers played games and sang songs, relaxed with the comfortable routine of travel. Many remarked that they liked the landscape of the Old World, and although they missed lovers, wives, and children from back home, they certainly preferred this duty to marching off to war and battling hordes of cannibalistic undead. Verna drifted off to sleep, listening as a young soldier played a stringed instrument and sang a quiet tune about a girl he had left behind in Anderith.

The next morning, the group rode to the new village. Ten families had staked their claim beside a wide stream. When the settlers saw the contingent of riders approach, they stood together warily. Verna realized these people must have suffered much over the years and had learned to fear strangers, but General Zimmer introduced himself and insisted that they came in peace.

“This valley is fertile again,” said a bearded man in mud-streaked clothes. He had fastened a makeshift plow to the settlement’s lone ox, and now stood beside the big animal. The villagers had cleared and tilled several acres of the land. Woodcutters had chopped down trees and worked them into logs for construction. “For a long time, nobody could live here, but now this ground is perfect for crops. And untouched.”

A thin woman with large eyes and prematurely gray hair came forward to greet General Zimmer and Prelate Verna. She gestured to the largest building they had constructed. “That one will be a schoolhouse. Once this settlement is established, more people will come down from the mountains to join us.”

“Many were driven out as the Lifedrinker’s Scar grew and grew,” said the first farmer. “But this valley is our ancestral home. It was ours long ago.”

“And the valley is yours again,” said General Zimmer. “We come with the news that the Imperial Order has faded, Emperor Jagang is dead, and Lord Rahl now wants you to be free to determine your own lives, without tyranny or oppression.”

More people came close, including three children, all covered with mud because they had been helping plant seeds in the new furrows. They all smiled at the soldiers.

“We are just riding through, finding our way to Cliffwall,” Verna said. “You have nothing to fear from us.”

“Cliffwall?” asked the first farmer. “I’ve heard of it. It’s far away and hidden in the canyons.” He gestured toward the high plateau in the north.

“We know exactly where we’re going,” Peretta said.

Without tarrying, the group rode onward, anxious to cover many miles. Over the next two days they encountered several other new settlements, before the expedition turned north, heading up into the high desert. Oliver and Peretta took the lead as the rocky terrain grew more complex, but even though the scholars remembered their previous path, they had traveled on foot, and their route was not appropriate for horses or so many men. Scouts had to range farther to divert around slot canyons or steep drop-offs. The canyonlands were beautiful, but they were a maze.

They pressed forward, and Verna heard some of the soldiers grumbling that they were lost. Many of the arroyos were dry, and the horses needed more water. The two young scholars, though, were not deterred. After following gravel-bottomed washes into towering red canyons, Oliver and Peretta’s horse led them into a narrowing canyon that seemed blocked off with a dead end.

“Here we are,” Oliver said, shading his eyes. Sitting just in front of him, Peretta beamed.

“There’s nothing but rock,” said General Zimmer.

Peretta flashed a smile at him. “You see why it’s such a good hiding place?”

The scholar guides dismounted and walked their horse forward. “You might not want to ride through. It’s pretty narrow,” Oliver said.

They approached the stone wall and walked directly into a shadow, turned left, and disappeared. Two scouts followed the Cliffwall scholars, and shouted an all-clear.

Verna realized it was a fold in the rock, a narrow passageway that remained hidden until she came directly up to it. She dismounted, leading Dusty by the halter, with General Zimmer and his destrier just ahead of her. The cool rock pressed against her as the walls closed in. The shadows were thick, because no sunlight penetrated into this narrow passageway, but after no more than ten steps, she and her horse emerged into a marvelous canyon, a separate world hidden from the outside.

Streams cut fingerlike canyons in the slickrock, leaving a lush green valley. Numerous fruit trees lined the central stream, with herds of sheep grazing on the thick grass. Terraced gardens used every scrap of fertile land for vegetable plots layered up along the cliffs. The rock walls rose high on either side of the canyon, studded with natural alcoves in which adobe buildings were nestled.

Shouts rang throughout the canyon as the people noticed the stream of horses and soldiers entering through the hidden crack.

“There!” Oliver pointed to the other side of the canyon.

Verna looked up to the wall on her right, to see a large grotto overhang that held enormous buildings, stone towers, and immense façades. A narrow path zigzagged up the side of the cliff to reach the imposing structures. Verna gasped. “Cliffwall?”

Oliver and Peretta nodded. “We’re back home.”