The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 16

It was not the time of the solstice when Arin and her companions rode through the Greatwood; it was instead July, and the sun shone down bright and hot. Yet under the sheltering bower of the leafy forest canopy, the dappled shade remained temperate throughout the long days as the Elven band slowly made their way through the dense woodland. They did not meet any Baeron during the easterly trek, nor did they see at the corner of the eye any evidence of the Fey. Hence only woodland birds and forest animals saw them passing through-or so it seemed-as they picked their way among the trees by day and camped in the forest by night. And one late afternoon some seven days after entering the Greatwood they emerged onto the rolling plains of Riamon.

The following day dawned to a mizzling rain as the Elves set out across the open wold on their eastward course, bearing a point or two northerly. In the distance to their left they could see through the drizzle the low crests of a spur of the Rimmen Mountains. They rode parallel to this spur for the next four days ere the mountains swung away to the north to join the main chain running east and west.

In the days that followed, the mountains remained in view 'gainst the distant northern horizon, as the Elves made their way across open rolling land. And another fifteen days elapsed ere they came in mid of day to the village of Bridgeton, there where the Landover Road crossed over the Ironwater River. There, too, the Sea Road began, following southward alongside the Ironwater all the way to Rhondor, a city in the foothills above the great basin known as Hel's Crucible. The road then followed alongside the foothills and the river and down to the shores of the ocean, rather than go through the Crucible itself, for that place was aptly named: hot, barren, arid, it was a deep bowl stretching a hundred miles onward to abruptly fetch up against a high stone barrier between it and the Avagon Sea.

Arin and her companions put up in the Red Goose in Bridgeton, in this traders' town, and rested the remainder of that day and all the next, replenishing their diminished supplies and enjoying as well hot baths and hot meals and cool ale and rich red wine… and sleeping on soft featherbeds. And they sang sad and sweet and rousing songs in the common room of the inn, to the delight of the townsfolk and guests alike, for although bards came through now and again, it was well known that Elven songs and Elven singers were the best of them all… or so it was said. Regardless as to whether or not this belief is true, the tavern was packed to overflowing when the news spread that "Elves, real Elves, are singing in the Goose."

The following day Arin and her comrades crossed the stone bridge above the Ironwater, and as they did so, two men on a great, rough, rope-bound raft of logs waved gaily up to them as they floated below downstream, perhaps logger-merchants from Dael riding the timber to Rhondor, a city of tile and clay and brick, where wood is precious.

Eastward fared the Elves along the Landover Road, intending to follow the tradeway all the way to the town of Vorlo on the border of Aralan. Steadily they wended along the road, an arc of the Rimmen Mountains in the distance to their left, the miles passing dustily beneath the shod hooves. They rode by day and stayed in crofters' haylofts or in wayside inns or in open-air camps by night. On the ninth day after leaving Bridgeton they rode up a long slope toward a low set of hills, and late on the following day they crossed over this running ridge connecting the Rimmen Mountains in the north to the Skarpal Mountains in the south. They had come into Garia and they rode down onto the broad plains of this land. It was the twentieth day of August, and they had yet some eighteen hundred miles to go to reach Darda Vrka.

On they rode easterly, along the Landover Road, now running parallel to the Skarpals in the south. And as they rode, there were signs all about that the summer was beginning to wane as farmers in their fields harvested grain and drovers with dogs rounded up livestock and herded them down from the mountain meadows and toward their winter pastures. And at these signals of the passing seasons Arin fretted, for she had had her vision on the first day of July, and now it was nearing September. She chafed at the pace she and her comrades maintained, yet they could go no faster for they had to spare the horses and mules. And so past ripened crops and fresh-cut fields they rode, and herds coming down from the mountains, and all the while Arin wondered if the terrible doom were rushing pell-mell toward them all and if it would fall ere she or any could do aught to avert its horror, if indeed it could be averted at all. And slowly the miles receded behind them as they crept across the face of the world.

Late in the evening of September thirteenth they finally arrived at Vorlo, the city along the west bank of the River Venn. And across the water on the opposite shore lay the realm of Aralan.

They spent that night and all the next day and night in this border town, resting and replenishing their depleted supplies, just as they had in Bridgeton, some eight hundred and fifty miles and thirty-four days behind. Eight leagues a day they had been riding, twenty-four miles each dawn to dusk, and another three hundred thirty or forty leagues lay before them, a thousand miles or so to Darda Vrka. Arin sighed. Surely we could have reached Rwn ere now, but for the rovers' blockade. Damn the Kistani pirates!

The following morn they led their animals down to the Vorlo Ferry, and across the river they fared and into Aralan. They followed the Overland Road another mile or so and then veered off to the left, heading northeastward across the open land, riding parallel to the River Venn, whose distant headwaters lay in the far-off mountains of the Grimwall. On the way to the Venn, down from these stark heights course a multitude of streams which converge in the vast Khalian Mire, where the turgid waters slowly ebb southward to ultimately seep into the Lesser Mire whose outflow in turn becomes the River Venn. And alongside this waterway rode the Elven band, at least for the next several days, for they were not bound for either the mires or the Grimwall, but for the Wolfwood instead.

Two weeks or so did they keep the valley of the Venn in sight, the trees along the river vale gradually changing color as the summer slowly waned. Deliberately their course and that of the channel diverged, till at last they could see the river vale no more as into the heart of Aralan they fared, still heading northeastward, following Rissa as she led them toward Darda Vrka.

It was during these same two weeks that the autumnal equinox came and went, and on the eve of the day when light and dark exactly balanced one another, near mid of night and in the western light of a yellow gibbous moon, the Dylvana and Silverleaf solemnly paced out the Elven rite celebrating the harvest and the turning of the seasons.

They dressed in their very best leathers and took their starting places, Darai facing north, Alori facing south, and then singing, chanting, and pacing, slowly pacing, they began a ritual reaching back through the ages. And enveloped by moonlight and melody and harmony and descant and counterpoint and the rustling brush of leather, the Elves trod gravely… yet their hearts were full of joy.

Step… pause… shift… pause… turn… pause… step.

Slowly, slowly, move and pause. Voices rising. Voices falling. Liquid notes,from the dawn of time. Harmony. Euphony. Step… pause… step. Arin turning. Rissa turning. Darai passing. Alori pausing. Counterpoint. Descant. Step… pause… step…

When the rite at last came to an end-voices dwindling, song diminishing, movement slowing, till all was silent and still-Darai and Alori once again stood in their beginning places: females facing north, males facing south. The motif of the pattern they had paced had not been random, but had had a specific design, had had a specific purpose, yet what that purpose was and is, only the Elves could say.

Comforted somewhat by the ancient ritual, Arin glanced at the starlit sky-the pale yellow moon had fallen nigh the western horizon, having covered a quarter of the spangled vault in its silent journey downward during the arcane dance. Its movement only served to remind her that time was irretrievably flowing into the past.

On the eve of the sixteenth of October they sighted the Skog, that hoary forest in the northern extent of Aralan. Autumn had fully come upon this woodland, for its leaves were now all golden and shimmering in the crisp wind blowing down from the distant Grimwall Mountains. And this wind carried with it the hint of the winter to come, and, gauging by the shag the horses and mules had taken on, it would be a brutal season.

Arin and her companions rode along the forest flank for nearly eight days as the gilded leaves turned scarlet and the nights grew even more chill, but at last they came to the margins of Darda Vrka.

Led by Rissa, they had reached the Wolfwood at last, and somewhere within they hoped to find Dalavar the Mage.