Taking Flight

Chapter Three

As they walked, a handful of people passed them eastbound, riding horses or heavily-loaded mules; one brown-clad man on foot ran past, panting. In the other direction they had as yet encountered only a single traveler, an old woman in a green robe who strode past at a pace belying her age. The two youths spoke to none of them, but Kelder was relieved to see that there actually were people using the Great Highway. They met no caravans, no marching armies, no minstrels or magicians — at least, not so far as Kelder could see — but at least the road was not deserted.

They had been walking for slightly less than an hour when they first came in sight of the forest. Kelder stared.

He had seen trees before, and groves, but the forest seemed to extend forever, all along the south side of the highway, while to the north there were only the familiar farms, a patchwork of cornfields and pastures, with occasional sheep and cattle scattered in the pastures.

“That’s called the Forest of Amramion,” Irith told him, “even though most of it’s actually in Uramor, and this corner here is in Hlimora.”

“It is?”

“Sure. It means we’re getting close to the border between Hlimora and Amramion, but we haven’t reached it yet.”

“Oh,” Kelder said. He stared at the forest for a moment more and then said, “It certainly is big.”

“Oh, it’s nothing special,” Irith said offhandedly. “The forests in Derua are a lot more impressive — the trees are at least twice as tall.”

“They are?” Kelder asked, turning to look at her face. It was more attractive than the forest anyway. For all the time they had been walking he had hoped she would speak, that she would say something that would give him an excuse to talk to her, a chance to develop a little more of a relationship. He wanted to get to know his future wife better.

He had thought that perhaps a traveler would greet them, or Irith would remark on something, or simply that some opportunity would occur to him to speak up — but now that he had that opportunity, he feared he was sounding like an idiot.

“Yes, they are,” Irith said. “I’ve seen them. And I’ve heard that the woods in Lumeth of the Forest are even better, but I haven’t been there, and some people say that way up north in Aldagmor and Sardiron there are forests that make anything anywhere in the Small Kingdoms look like nothing much.”

“”Really?” Kelder asked.

“I don’t know,” Irith said. “But that’s what I’ve heard.”

They walked on silently for a moment after that, Kelder trying to think of something to say to continue the conversation. Finally, prompted by an emptiness in his belly, he asked, “Have you had any breakfast?”

Irith glanced at him. “No,” she said, “but that’s okay, I’m not hungry.”

“I am,” Kelder said. “Do you think we can find something to eat around here?”

“Well,” Irith said, a trifle reluctantly, “there are inns in the village of Amramion, where the king’s castle is.”

“How far is that?”

Irith looked up the highway, then back the way they had come. “Oh,” she said, “about three leagues. Hlimora Castle’s a lot closer, of course.”

“It is?” Kelder asked, startled.

“Sure,” Irith said. “That’s where I stayed last night. Where did you think I came from?”

“I don’t know,” Kelder said. “I guess I thought you’d camped out somewhere, same as I did.”

She looked at him as if convinced he was insane. “Why would I do that?” she asked. “It’s cold and wet and uncomfortable, sleeping outdoors.”

“But...” Kelder was flustered, unsure what question most needed asking now. It didn’t help any that he still had some difficulty thinking in Trader’s Tongue. Finally, he managed, “How far is Hlimora Castle?”

“About a league, maybe a little more — just out of sight of where we met. But it’s in the wrong direction, if you’re going to Shan. And besides, it’s boring.”

“Oh.” Kelder struggled to decide which was more important, going to Shan and not being boring, or getting something to eat. The three leagues to Amramion seemed like an awfully long distance to travel without his breakfast.

There were no other travelers in sight just now. Had there been, Kelder might have attempted to beg some food, but as it was he didn’t have that option. He looked down the road ahead, where he could see nothing but cornfields and pasture and forest, and then he looked back toward Hlimora, where he could see nothing but hills and cornfields and pasture, and he thought about the difference between the hour or so it would take to reach Hlimora Castle, and the three hours — more, really, as he’d need to stop and rest somewhere — it would take to reach the village of Amramion, and he thought about the emptiness in his stomach.

Then, when he thought he’d decided, he looked at Irith’s face and forgot about food.

“Oh,” he said, “I’ll be fine.” He glanced around, and added, “But if you see anything to eat anywhere, tell me.” He eyed the corn growing in the fields, but as yet there were only green stalks, not even unripe ears to eat.

“All right,” she said.

They marched on, and the forest stretched on alongside. They met no other travelers on this stretch.

About twenty minutes later Irith pointed to a low plant growing by the roadside, almost in the shade of the forest. “Those are strawberries,” she said, “but I don’t know if any of them are ripe.”

Kelder wasn’t sure he cared if they were ripe, and picked a handful. After his first taste, however, he decided that ripening was important after all; he tossed the rest away. He and his stomach grumbled on.

An hour or so later, after silent encounters with two more horsemen and twice that number westbound afoot, they came to the border between Hlimora and Amramion, a border marked by a small tower of reddish stone. It looked deserted, but as they approached a man in a steel helmet leaned over a merlon atop the tower and shouted at them.

Neither could make out the words, but Irith waved cheerfully.

The two of them strolled on, Kelder growing nervous, Irith quite calm as they approached the watchtower.

The man shouted again, and this time Kelder understood him; he was speaking Trader’s Tongue.

“Who goes there?” he called.

Kelder looked at Irith, unsure what to say. She just waved gaily and called, “Hello!”

The guard squinted down at her.

“Irith?” he called.

She nodded.

“Walking this time, are you?” the guard called. “What happened to your wings?”

She grinned and stepped back away from Kelder for a moment.

When she stepped away she was just a girl — a very beautiful one, but a girl. Then, suddenly, she had wings that unfolded behind her, those great glistening white wings he had seen before. Kelder revised his earlier estimate; her wingspan was more than fifteen feet, and might be a full twenty.

She folded her wings, and then they were gone again. Kelder started to ask something, then didn’t bother.

“Magic,” he muttered to himself. “Wonders and magic.”

“What about him?” the guard called, pointing at Kelder.

“I met him up the road,” Irith called. “His name’s Kelder.”

“That right, boy?” the guard called.

“Yes, sir,” Kelder replied, “Kelder of Shulara.”

“You a trader?”

“No, sir.”

“You of noble birth?”

“No.”

“You armed?”

“No, just a belt knife.”

“Doesn’t count. You a magician?”

“No.”

“You swear that you’ve told me the truth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Irith?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I just met him,” Irith replied, a bit flustered. “But I think it’s all true. It’s the same thing he told me!”

“All right, go on, then,” the guard said. “And you, Kelder, you be careful of Irith.”

Kelder blinked, and nodded. The soldier waved them on, and they walked on.

Kelder puzzled over the guard’s last sentence. His knowledge of Trader’s Tongue was still far from perfect, and he wasn’t sure whether the guard had meant that he should defend Irith, or beware of Irith.

The latter didn’t seem to make much sense. She might be a shapeshifter, but she was still just a girl. And the guard himself certainly didn’t seem very worried about her; he’d greeted her as an old friend.

So he must have been asking him to look after her.

Well, that sounded fine to Kelder. He was very interested indeed in looking after Irith indefinitely.

And the guard knew who and what Irith was, and had greeted her by name. He had seemed willing to take her word for Kelder’s identity. That implied, at the very least, that she really had traveled the Great Highway before, probably more than once. Kelder looked at his companion again, wondering how she had managed it. She must have started traveling awfully young!

Impressing her was going to be very difficult, he realized, if she had traveled so far and seen so much. He wished he knew more about her, and more about women in general. All the other girls he had associated with much were people he had known since childhood; he had had no practice in getting to know females, in attracting their interest — and he needed Irith to be interested in him. She was so beautiful, so endearing, that just walking beside her was a constant blend of agony and delight — delight at her presence, and agony at the frustration of doing nothing but walking beside her. He wanted to touch her, hold her — but he didn’t have the nerve, yet.

The mere fact that she was there meant she liked him, since after all, she could fly away at any second — but he had no way to judge how much she liked him, or what she wanted from him.

Boiling with indecision, he walked on, watching her.

They reached the town of Amramion a little over two hours after crossing the border.

It was quite a pleasant and interesting town, as far as Kelder was concerned — the largest he had ever seen, though the village surrounding Elankora Castle had come close. The castle that stood at its center, atop a low hill just south of the Great Highway, was rather larger and more sprawling — and less fortified — than the ones he had seen back in Shulara and Elankora. It had four small towers and no keep that Kelder could spot; it had a dozen half-timbered gables, and no curtain wall.

Around it were scattered scores and scores of houses and shops — the shops of wheelwrights, wainwrights, blacksmiths, poultrymen, and more. And all along the highway there were carts and stalls where the locals offered for sale all their best produce — fine dyed wool, and smoky-scented hams, and early vegetables of half a hundred varieties, most of which Kelder had never seen before. The earthy smell of fresh produce and the tang of the hams reached his nose and set his mouth watering.

Irith seemed unaffected.

At either end of the town were inns, standing close by the roadside and marking the ends of what was, in effect, a long, narrow open-air market. Four inns stood at the west end, where Kelder and Irith entered; Irith told him there were three more at the far eastern end.

Kelder, now ravenous, didn’t care to walk that far for his breakfast. He strolled perhaps a hundred feet along the market, weaving through the crowd and looking over the merchandise. He bought himself a slightly underripe orange — obviously imported, as the Amramionic climate was clearly unsuitable for oranges — and headed for the nearest inn, hoping that the fantasies he had had about life along the highway might yet come true, at least in part.

Irith stopped him.

“Not that one,” she said. “It’s second-rate. This one!”

She pointed to one of the others. The signboard depicted a robed man sitting cross-legged, holding a staff and hanging his head heavily. “It’s called the Weary Wanderer,” Irith told Kelder. “They make the best biscuits on the entire Great Highway here.”

Kelder followed her inside.

Ten minutes later he was glad he had, because if the biscuits were not the best on the Great Highway, then Kelder had spent his life with some very wrong ideas about biscuits. He had never encountered any so tasty. In fact, his entire breakfast was phenomenally good.

Of course, hunger makes the best sauce; he knew that. Even so, the food at the Weary Wanderer was exceptional.

Although Irith had insisted she wasn’t hungry, she, too, ate and drank eagerly. Besides the famous biscuits, the specialty of the house was a thick, frothy lemonade which obviously contained more than just the usual water and lemons and honey, and Irith and Kelder each downed several mugs of the stuff.

Somehow, Kelder was not particularly surprised when the innkeeper greeted Irith by name. She didn’t intrude on the meal, however; once she had delivered their breakfast she returned to the kitchen and left the travelers in peace.

The only drawback to the meal came at the end, when Kelder, who had offered to pay the bill, discovered that he owed about twice what he had expected. He had made the offer partly because to do so was the traditional male role when courting, and partly because he had seen no sign that Irith had any money. Now, though, he almost regretted it.

“That’s a lot,” he said.

Irith shrugged. “Only a fool sells the best for less,” she quoted. “Besides, prices are always higher along the highway.”

Kelder grimaced, but he paid.

Thus fortified, the two of them continued on their way, strolling onward through the town of Amramion and out into open farm country again. Traffic was heavier now; they encountered an occasional wagon, and entire parties of travelers. One red-dressed woman had a dulcimer slung on her back, and Kelder brightened at this sight — a minstrel, surely, the first he had ever seen.

It was about noon when they passed another isolated guard tower. Irith identified this one as marking the border between Amramion and Yondra, and this time the guard let them pass without comment.

“They’re Amramionic,” Irith explained when Kelder asked why the guard had ignored them. “They monitor the traffic into Amramion, but not out. If it were a Yondran guard he’d have asked us questions, but Yondra doesn’t post guards at the borders.”

They walked on.

Irith seemed tireless, and after a time Kelder found himself trudging wearily along while she scampered ahead, looking at flowers and butterflies. Stones and dust didn’t trouble her at all, even though she was barefoot, and he marveled at that. His feet ached, and his own half-boots, new a sixnight before, were visibly worn, yet she was scampering about like a squirrel, her feet in nothing but her own skin.

Kelder wondered again just who she was — and what she was. Her story about being a wizard’s apprentice made sense enough on the surface, but no matter how he figured it, the times were all wrong. She was only fifteen; how could she possibly have done and seen everything she claimed?

There was a mystery here, and if Kelder was going to fulfill his destiny and marry Irith, he would have to unravel it.

How could a girl younger than himself have traveled so widely? Why was she roaming about by herself, with no family or friends, yet apparently known everywhere she went? How did she keep from tiring? Was that more magic, perhaps?

She was a marvel in many ways, certainly — her wings and her beauty were merely the most obvious. When he brought back to Shulara as his bride, when his family and his friends saw her, that would surely put an end to any teasing about his desire to see more of the World and his belief in Zindre’s predictions. If there were creatures like Irith to be found, then obviously the World was worth seeing.

He was tempted to simply ask her, right now, to turn back and go to Shulara with him and marry him, but he didn’t dare.

For one thing, she would almost certainly say no; while she was friendly enough, he didn’t think she was so carefree, or so fond of him, that she would abandon her own plans — whatever they might be — to accompany him. And surely, she would have more sense than to marry a stranger she had just met. She had no reason to do so save to please him, and she had no reason to care that much about pleasing him.

Better to wait and let their relationship grow naturally.

And he didn’t really want to go back home yet, anyway — not while there were more wonders to be found and the rest of his destiny to find. Great cities, vast plains, strange beasts, more magic — they were all out there, still waiting for him.

And now he had a guide to show him the way. He would never have found the Weary Wanderer and its almost miraculous food without Irith, and she might show him other marvels, as well. He wasn’t sure whether those biscuits qualified as a wonder, but they certainly came close.

So for now he resolved to carry on, to try and impress Irith in any way he could, and to learn whatever he could about the World.

Another hour or so brought them to Yondra Keep, a small, old, vine-grown and weather-battered castle atop a hill, with a quiet little village clustered about its walls. Irith looked up at it, and a faintly worried expression crossed her face.

“Kelder,” she said suddenly, “maybe we should stop here for the night.”

“But it’s scarcely mid-afternoon,” he said, puzzled. “Why stop so early?”

“Well, it’s a good four or five leagues yet to Angarossa Castle, that’s why,” she explained. “We couldn’t possibly get there before dark, or at least you couldn’t, and I don’t want to fly on ahead without you, that wouldn’t be any fun. And Angarossa isn’t... well, there are other places I’d rather be after dark than on the road in Angarossa, let’s just put it that way.”

“Oh,” Kelder said. “Ah... why? Are there dragons or something?”

“Dragons?” Irith asked, startled, turning to stare at him. “On the Great Highway?” she smiled, then giggled. “Oh, Kelder, you’re so silly! No, of course there aren’t any dragons.” Her smile vanished, and she said, quite seriously, “But there are bandits.”

“Oh,” Kelder said again. While the prospect of meeting bandits might have seemed exciting once, right now, footsore as he was, it didn’t have any appeal at all. He looked up at Yondra Keep and its surrounding village. “All right, let’s stop here.”

“Good!” Irith said, clapping her hands gleefully. “I know just the place!”