The Pilgrims

67

He walked through the night, past nervous villagers who gathered at the great dividing road and stared towards the Wall, where the immense booming sounded like the world itself being pounded to dust. The ground could be felt to shake a long way away.

When the first piece of wall broke off and fell, Anfen felt a rush of wind pass overhead, cold or hot from one instant to the next. Like most, Anfen could not see the glimmering shades of magic in the sky, so he did not see the rush of foreign magic force pouring into Levaal’s northern half, and he did not see the native magic pouring out. Nor did he see Arch Mage’s huge Engineer-built airships parked in the sky some way west, built specially to collect as much of the new force as they could, raw and crude before it mixed with Northern Levaal’s airs.

Nor did Anfen care any longer what might or might not happen, to him or the world. He finally understood how little he mattered, which was an enormous relief. All that mattered was the road he now had to walk. It would take some time. Now and then he would fall inert by the roadside, body simply refusing another step. He’d wake, find food, even if it was just a mouthful of leaves and roots, enough to keep him going to the destination he knew he deserved. Most he passed on the great dividing road, seeing the look in his eye, kept out of his way.

With the crowds of locals — some from nearby High Cliffs, some from as far afield as Tanton — Eric, Loup, and Siel watched with disbelief what seemed to be parts of the sky itself breaking off and falling down.

When clouds of foreign magic blew in through the higher gaps, Loup cursed loudly. ‘I ain’t going near any of that!’ he cried. ‘News to me, whatever it is, but I don’t like the look of it at all. I’ll be at Faifen, dead air or no. Away from the windows, mind.’ He turned his horse, riding it away at a gallop.

Through larger holes, the foreign sky beyond was revealed. As night fell, little could be discerned through it — there were glimpses of hazy red colour, like distant fires, but mostly just the gloom of night. ‘He did it,’ Siel said for the tenth time, her voice no less disbelieving.

Sharfy, from the window of his inn, said the very same thing. He was quite drunk with ale — had indeed spent a fine evening trading tales with an old High Cliffs veteran in the pub downstairs — but he knew he saw sights real enough. When a broken piece of wall landed in the inn’s yard, smashing down on a wagon parked out front, he quickly packed his things and rode north as fast as he could. He did not know: was this a victory for the Free World, or were they now caught in a vice crushing from north and south?

By the roadsides, camps of watchers became a common sight as people stared, mostly in silence, at a dramatically changing horizon.