They carried on through the lowlands, still taking it fairly slowly, always heading toward the border country and their meeting with the Queen of Xorn.
They gathered ingredients and made potions on the way, Saul storing some of them on his person, some in his inventory, and adding the Grant Potion Sigil to some so that he could send them to Brand and Zorea’s inventories as well.
The exploration of new territory added Gold XP coins at a slow but steady rate to his Workshop, and combined with the Green XP from potion creation, he was soon able to craft the Sigil to unlock Levels 15 and 16. When he returned from the Workshop after achieving this level up, he felt restored, strong, and hopeful, and ready for the challenges ahead.
Few travelers passed them on the road. Those that did pass, while courteous, did not pay them much attention. Dressed as they were—in Xornian military uniform and riding the impressive raptors—the civilians and travelers who they encountered on the road seemed more than content to assume they were ranking military officers, and to respectfully pass them by.
The lowland valleys were defined by the large, imposing slopes that were the foothills of the Sawtooth mountains. Eventually, one morning, their road ran slowly up one of these hills.
When they reached the top, they found that they had come to the end of the lowland hill country. The land beyond was flat and green, and sloped gently downward away south, unbroken by any hills.
Saul sat his raptor. Brand was on his left, and Zorea on his right, and together they gazed out south on the lands beyond the Xornian hills.
The road wound down through a patchwork of fields, woods, and small rivers, down through the Xornian borderlands, all the way to the Dragon River, that deep, wide water that marked the bonder of the Xornian Realm.
The land by the Dragon River was where the Queen’s castle was located, and where most of the population of Xorn was concentrated. There were two crossings over the river. One was the Queen’s Bridge to the western end of the river, and the other was the Green Ford, which lay right below Blackrock Castle, the home of the Xornian royal family.
On the Xornian side, a road ran from the Queen’s Bridge to the Green Ford, and served as a trade route for the villages. The road joined up all the major towns, ending at the Queen’s Castle, the great fortress of Blackrock, seat of power of the ancient rulers of Xorn.
In the distance, from where Saul and his friends now stood, they could just make out the twinkle of the sun on the water of the Dragon River. Beyond that, in the haze of the afternoon, lay the great flat green expanse of Keldor.
Zorea’s face glowed with enjoyment as the spring sunshine shone down on them, lighting up the faces of the three companions as they looked south over the lands before them and considered the adventures to come.
Saul felt similarly pleased by the change of setting. The small area around the village of Harkin’s Holdfast, the mountains, the forest, and the looming gray sky and constant wind—not to mention the pressure of being under constant threat from Grimdir’s forces—all had become almost claustrophobic.
He had been there a little over two years, and though he had done good work there and had definitely mastered the first stages of the use of his System, he was glad to be moving on.
“It does me good to think of the population back at the village managing to take their place again, to rebuild their lives as well as their homes,” Brand said, interrupting Saul’s thoughts.
“Me too,” Saul agreed. He smiled. “We did a good thing there, even if we don’t take into account the wider consequences.”
Brand nodded, but Zorea gave Saul a sharp look.
“The wider consequences,” she repeated thoughtfully. “There’s more to your involvement in Harkin’s Holdfast than meets the eye, isn’t there?”
Brand looked at them both. “Ah,” the young man said, half-joking. “Zorea’s favorite mystery. Why does Saul care so much about Harkin’s Holdfast?”
“What do you mean?” Saul asked, bewildered, looking from one to the other of them.
“Oh, come on,” Zorea said. “You were this great general, with all this power, reborn into a new body at the behest of an ancient god, and you decided to focus all your efforts, and even risk your life, on saving the most backwater of backwater villagers from a bunch of rogue warlocks? There’s more to that than simple morality.”
“When you first told us about yourself,” Brand added, “I also wondered. I don’t know, but it did seem weird. You have this great destiny that you need to fulfill, but what has the village of Harkin’s Holdfast to do with that?”
Saul looked thoughtfully at his young friends. To him, the answer was obvious.
His knowledge of the future past let him know the consequences of the fall of the Xornian borderlands. After the warlocks took the northern territories of the realm of Xorn, the peoples of the southern border rose in revolt, no longer feeling secure in the protection of the Queen and her military generals.
The borderlands revolt would eventually lead to the Faction Wars, the period of bloody and destructive civil war that engulfed the whole realm of Keldor, but the fall of the northern territories was the catalyst that set off the reaction.
Without the fall of Harkin’s Holdfast, there would be no borderland rebellion.
Without the borderland rebellion, there would be no civil war.
Though he did not fully know what his task was here in this new life, beyond regaining his power and mastering the System, it didn’t feel like a coincidence that he had been reborn right into the middle of that fateful moment in history.
By saving the village of Harkin’s Holdfast from destruction by Grimdir’s warlock army, he was getting in the way of the inevitability of the outbreak of civil war in the wider realm.
He had explained this to Captain Jerryl, but he realized now that he had not gone into detail about it with his young apprentices. He looked at them now, thoughtfully, thinking about consequences.
How much should he share with them?
“Come on, Saul,” Brand said, gently encouraging. “We’ve been through enough together now, surely you can tell us what’s on your mind.”
Saul nodded.
“I’m hesitating because I don’t know what the unintended consequences might be of telling you two about it,” he said. “Imagine time running along its course, all the countless events and their consequences, the meetings and the chance encounters, the births, the deaths, the battles and the discoveries. Think about what it is to be in a timeline of consequences like that. That’s where we are, all the time, even if most of the time we don’t realize it or think much about it.”
The two digested his words for a moment.
Then Zorea said, “You know what is going to happen, what the key events are that trigger the big consequences.”
“Exactly,” Saul said.
Brand spoke up. “And you are worried that if we know about the potential future, we might end up changing things in some unexpected way?”
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Saul nodded. “Say I knew the location of a gold mine, or a powerful sword, or a magical treatise that could deliver great wisdom and magical knowledge. Now imagine that at this point now, in our current timeline, these powerful, fate-altering things are not discovered for ten years, but I know that these discoveries allow a particular faction to win an important battle, a battle that leads to good consequences for the world at large. Now say I let slip something about that, and someone hears about it and goes there and gets the treasure, whatever it is, and then in ten years from now the battle takes place and the good faction loses the battle and so on…you see my point?”
“I do,” Brand said, “and I see why you need to be cautious, but I propose this solution. You already know something about Harkin’s Holdfast and the warlocks. I suspect that in your old timeline, the village fell, and the warlocks ran rampant through Xorn, and that triggered some wider chain of consequences that you want to avoid.”
Saul smiled and nodded approvingly. Brand’s wits were sharp, he could see. The young man had come a long way since the days of his hot-headed rabble rousing when the forest fire trolls had been threatening the village foragers.
“You’re right, Brand,” Saul said. “So do you understand why I hesitate?”
“I do,” Brand said.
Zorea was watching the conversation closely, her head moving from one side to the other as she followed their interplay.
“But I would say this,” Brand continued after a moment’s thought. “We’re not asking for you to relate the whole story of the future that you know. I don’t want you to tell me about undiscovered gold mines or magic artifacts or whatever it is. I’m with you, Saul, and now that Zorea and I can benefit from your command of Sigil magic, I want nothing more than to learn from you, to be your disciple and follow in your quest.”
As he spoke, Brand held up his hand. There was a soft whump as fire leaped into life around his fingers. He gazed at it in fascination for a moment, then let the spell go out again.
“Magic, Saul, that’s what I’m all about,” he said. “I’m keen to know what you were trying to avoid by defending the Holdfast, but I’m not asking you to reveal anything you think might be dangerous. Either way, you can trust me not to misuse anything you tell me.”
Zorea nodded her agreement, and Saul could feel their loyalty and sincerity through the magical thread of awareness that joined them.
Brand spoke on. “I only want to know why Harkin’s Holdfast is so important. I suspect that it’s a trigger of great consequences, but I want you to confirm whether I’m right, or whether you stayed there for some other reason.”
“It’s the unintended consequences I’m worried about,” Saul said, “not the idea that you two might betray me either on purpose or by accident. I trust you both now. But I suppose that I must be unleashing unintended consequences with every breath I take now, just by being in this new timeline.”
Saul grinned and threw up his hands. “I suppose it can’t hurt now. After all, the consequence has been averted, and for all I know, we are on an entirely new path now. Oh, very well,” he said, enjoying the eager interest in the eyes of his two young disciples. “You may as well know what we’re doing. Who knows, perhaps the unintended consequences might be beneficial? I’ll trust in our friendship.”
He was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
“You’re right, of course,” Saul began. “You know that when I was a great general, I was working together with my dear friend and battle-brother, the Emperor Baraz Karak. We began our journey together in the midst of the civil war, Baraz and I. The many petty fiefdoms of Keldor had exploded into open warfare, and the land was plagued with suffering, but you’re right. The catalyst for that war was the fall of an insignificant little village in the far north of the world.
“Harkin’s Holdfast was taken by the warlocks, and they used it as a staging post to spread out into the lands beyond. The Xornian border villages rose up in revolt against the Queen of Xorn after the warlocks took the northlands. The Queen died, and the princess too. The Royal family of Xorn was ended, and troops from the Riverlands came into Xorn to quell the fighting.
“The Trader Cities of Rymon, Sandour, and the Golden Ford all hired mercenaries and tried to encroach on the Riverlands while the Riverland troops were engaged elsewhere, and so on, and on. Before many years had passed, nearly all of the lands of Keldor were at war with each other.”
“It must have been an awful time,” Zorea said quietly.
Saul nodded. “I was born when the violence was at its peak, but I grew up in the great famine that followed the worst of the fighting. Disruption to the grain supply from the eastern provinces and the fall of the Bright Dukes of the Citadel of Guiding Light caused a terrible situation. A situation that myself and Baraz decided to change.”
He paused, and then shook himself, becoming aware again of the bright day around them, and shedding off the dark memories of war and bloody battlefields that gathered like wraiths around his mind.
“Anyway,” he said. “When I realized that I had been reborn, and where, I realized I had an opportunity to change the future, to turn the tide of events. I don’t know why Sarkur chose that specific location for me to be reborn into, but I can’t accept that it was mere coincidence. How could I? Even if Sarkur did not intend it, there was some deeper purpose at work there that I do not yet understand. But I found myself in a position where I could halt the fall of the first pebble that started the avalanche. So, I did.”
“And now?” Zorea asked. “Now that you have done it, how will you proceed?”
Saul shrugged and gave her a sidelong look. “I’ll take the guidance of fate, partly. The Queen of Xorn has sent for us, so we’re going to see her. That’s simple enough.”
“I know you better than that,” Zorea said, smiling. “You have a deeper purpose in mind.”
Saul smiled at her. “It’s true, of course. I was a battle commander, and I didn’t think much about fate back then, but it seems to me now that fate is like a river running in well-worn channels, and the major catalyzing events are like rocks in that stream that redirect its flow. In saving Harkin’s Holdfast from the warlocks, I’ve maybe removed one of those rocks, but I feel certain there are others.
“The borderlands revolt against the queen had been building for a long time, and I think that even with the defeat of the warlocks, something else may happen to trigger the revolt that brought down the Xornian royal family, and the consequences of that event may still bring about the Faction Wars in Keldor. So, I want to go to the borderlands and see the villages, assess the tensions, and see if there’s anything I can do to stem that tide. You understand?”
“And there’s something else,” Brand added. “You want to go to the borderlands and see if you can intervene, but there’s also the Xornian Queen’s request to see you. So you are prompted by fate to do the very thing you want to do anyway, and brought into the right place at the right time to avert the next potential trigger of the great war that you wish to avoid…”
“Brand, you have it exactly,” Saul said.
“You mentioned something a moment ago,” Zorea said. “You mentioned the Bright Dukes and the Citadel, and you said that they fell in the Faction War?”
Saul nodded.
Zorea shook her head in amazement. “The destruction of the Bright Dukes, and the loss of the Citadel, that is very hard for me to imagine. The Bright Dukes are so mysterious, the Citadel so powerful, and they have occupied the Citadel for so long. Isn’t it the case that their magical wards have never been broken? How could such a thing come to pass?”
“There was a terrible battle,” Saul said. “Followed by a siege that lasted nearly two years, but a group of mages—partly drawn from mercenaries overseas, and partly from the remainder of the warlock forces that had dispersed after the fall of Xorn—took service with the Trader Cities who wanted to take control of the grain supply for themselves. They put immense pressure on the magical barriers created by the Bright Dukes, but the final blow fell when some of the mercenaries hired by the Bright Dukes switched sides, allowing an assassin to get into the Citadel itself and kill Duke Carox, the head of the lead channeler team. Then the enemy mages busted through the magical barriers at last.”
“How did the grain country end up being destroyed, though?” Brand asked. “Surely it was in the interest of the attackers to keep that working?”
“Uncontrolled magic,” Saul said. “The breaking of the magical wards caused a magical cataclysm the likes of which has never been seen before or since, and never will be, if I have my way. A wave of destruction flooded east over the lands, scorching the fields and killing everything in its path—people, animals, crops, everything. An unintended consequence.”
“What happened then?” Zorea asked, a little breathlessly.
Saul realized that they had slowed to a stop, and the two young people were staring at him, eyes shining with curiosity.
He chuckled. “In the end, what happened was that I restored the Citadel, but not the Dukes. It became the seat of the empire’s magical power, and it was renamed the Prism Academy. We named it for the Prism, which was a marvelous device that we discovered we could use to gather and distribute magical channeling in a way never seen before. That became a great part of our ability to unify the lands, but it came at a great cost.”
“Saul,” Brand suddenly asked, very seriously, “are you going to try to unify the lands again, and do what you did in your past life? Are you going to try to rebuild the empire?”
“What?” Saul said, a little shocked. “No! No, of course not. We succeeded in the end, but the War of Unification to bring all the lands into the empire’s sway was a terrible conflict. There was no one who didn’t suffer. No, Brand, I don’t want to go through all that again, and anyway, without Baraz Karak’s leadership at my side, I don’t think I could do it on my own. No, I have a new goal now. I’m not trying to do the Wars of Unification all over again. Instead, I want to forestall the terrible situation that made the Unification necessary in the first place.”
Brand nodded thoughtfully again, seeming satisfied with Saul’s answer.
“Now, if you don’t mind,” Saul said firmly, urging his raptor forward again, “I’ve spoken enough about the past. Let’s see that Firebrand spell of yours again. We still have a fair way to travel. Let’s practice your spells as we go. Soon, we’ll reach Blackrock Castle, and then we’ll have other work to do. Until then, I want to put the time to good use.”