In the nostalgic gales of a lonely winter storm, we flew down the slopes of the stars-shorn mountain.
Dreary and cold was the wagon’s company on those well-travelled switchbacks, each morning’s fog adding itself on top of the lasts as we went. In our turns at the helm of the wagon, each of us learned to love the colgs’ innate vision, their ability to pick out the path in a visibility I could only possibly describe as abysmal. Nay four metres of white-tinged cobbles was what I could see, all the time afraid of missing the turn and tumbling down the cliffs of the mountain.
Despite the winds and sudden flurries, I found the storm calming to travel through. The rushing gales eventually twisted into something not unlike song as they blew over the invisible peaks high around, and the far off whispers of their movement through the valley sounded to me like the ethereal howls of a hundred spirits. The smell of sharp rime and damp wood pervaded the wagon, and the fearful thoughts of uncertainty shortened our conversations into the bare wonder of our surroundings as if we could do little more than bask in the majesty of the elements.
The weight of thousand generations lay crushed upon these mountains, every gentle bump of the wagon paying homage to the hundreds who’d built such roads. Just how long had this path stood, I often wondered. Did they imagine their work under the fury of such storms? Of that, not even Hans could possibly answer. The beginning of the long steps down from the Everstar’s chosen peak had long since passed from memory and onto legend, just as the kingdom it had first served under had done. Verol was an old land, I realised then, more storied than even the most ancient of European bloodlines. I could only wonder how high the tomes of this one valley could stack, if set upon each other like sediment upon rock. By Hans’s reckoning, they would rival the mountains themselves.
My favourite spot to sit, when it wasn’t my turn to steer, quickly happened to be at the very back sil, where I could dangle my legs out to catch the drifting flakes as they swirled down like so many leaves. It was a soothing spot, to watch as the howling winds kicked up flurries of crystal and white, nor did the wind bother me too much in its ill-temperance. Often I sat there, indifferent to the tedium of our trip.
In fact, I managed to avoid the brunt of the boredom that often came with such travel, my every sense brimming with a peculiar awe. The nightmares of the Red Man seemed muted and silly in the vigorous air of the mountain, and not even the threat of imprisonment and death that laid behind us could dull the ethereal wonder of the storm.
“I always feel an aching nostalgia in storms like this.” Breale popped down beside me on the back bench, a white hood and cloak drawn close to ward off the chill. She wore several pairs of socks under her long, thick skirt, and a coat and gloves under her cloak. The same black wrapped boots that everyone seemed to wear adorned her feet. “It reminds me of Summark, I think.”
I nodded, feeling the same way with my own borrowed memories. I had thankfully been given more appropriate gear for the weather before we had left, and had gratefully changed into an outfit roughly the same as Breales, only with trousers instead. I was still a guy on the inside, no matter what had been forced upon me.
“Yep. I used to watch as the rain rolled over the eastern mountains, waiting for the curtains to flow over the castle in Andorlin. The musical winds are much softer in the east, though this is fine too.”
Saphry had dozens of strange pastimes in her life, most of which were objectively worthless, but for some reason I found these particular memories enticing. Whenever I had just absorbed some of Saphry’s uselessness or I had just been overwhelmed by curiosity I couldn’t tell, but my heart still yearned to return to, or rather finally see, my host’s homeland.
“Exactly! Though Brionin’s Peak lies between the Wall and Cice.” She gazed into the mists, looking for something which wasn’t there. “I’ll be excited when we finally return, after we’re finished with all this business. Brother and I’ve been away far too long.”
“Ah, so you’re planning on staying in Minua then?”
Breale glanced at me strangely.
“Are you not?”
“Me?” Now it was my turn to be confused. “I mean, I was going to stay for a few weeks, at least. After that I was going back to Andorlin though.”
I wasn’t lying either. I planned to stay in Minua just as long as we required to gather all the necessary ingredients, and then to return to Saphry’s hometown for the ritual. FIgured it would be better for the girl to be someplace safe and homely when we jumped back to Earth.
“That might not reflect too well on your grades, you know.” She sounded a little peeved in her response, as if I was breaking some kind of promise.
“Grades? What are you…. Oh, for [Christ’s] sake.”
I had completely forgotten about the academy after all that had happened, as well as the fact that it was in Minua. But then again, could anyone really blame me? Who thought of going back to school when on the run from the state!
“Exactly.” Breale nodded furiously. “You have to stay! You, Auro, and myself were all going to be dormmates together!”
“Wait, when was something like that decided?!” Warning signals from the thought of sharing a dorm with two girls flashed through my mind before more important concerns wafted in. “Actually, hold up a second. Why are you two still planning on attending? Wouldn’t that make you a little too easy for the senate to find? Verol is only two weeks away! You’d be arrested for sure.”
I had already been caught by the feds at one school already, and I wasn’t planning on doing that again. It was insanity, in any case. Especially when we knew a company was already en-route to Verol.
“Isn’t it obvious we would room together? All three of us are arriving late, and we all know each other. Of course we’d be put in the same room!”
“Why is that the question you focus on?”
Think about the consequences, you airhead!
“Well, because it wouldn’t be a problem?” Breale grinned. “Minua’s probably one of the safest places in Verol right now.”
Safest places? I brought some of the few maps I’d seen back to mind, trying to remember the shapes of the duchies.
“Isn’t Minua the closest duchy to Verol?”
“Fanula’s actually a little closer. But that’s actually a benefit right now, anyway.”
“Then…?”
I couldn’t really see how we’d possibly be safe in a city so close. Wouldn’t it make more sense to travel back to our homelands until this all cooled down?
“Minua is the Belvan’s land.” Breale explained. “And they don’t have the best relationship with the royal senate, nor with Verol. It was kind of surprising to me that Auro helped out Andril like she did, actually. Most of her family wouldn’t do something like that.”
“They wouldn’t turn over a batch of nobodies the senate was accusing of treason and mass murder?”
“We aren’t ‘nobodies’.” She straightened her back indignantly, raising her voice above a sudden gust of wind. “We are the noble children of Summark, the oldest allies of the northern duchies and the closest among the Belvan’s friends. They wouldn’t give us up for the Valley of Esilmor, nor anything else the senate could offer. Isn’t that something you of all people should know?”
I looked away, embarrassed in my ignorance. She was right, I should know such basic political information as that, especially when they influenced my family so heavily. How could I possibly lead Summark if I didn’t even know my duchy’s own friends?
Wait, I didn’t have to worry about something like that anyway. I’d be gone long before that, nor was Saphry even the next in line for the throne. Actually, wasn’t this information Saphry should’ve imparted to me already? What a worthless host.
Still, it was good to know that Verol was so fragmented. If a king couldn’t even force a noble to give up its people, then this kingdom might not be as absolute as I first thought.
“Still, is attending the academy really the best use of your time right now? Wasn’t Andril going to go plead to the other duchies?” A ominous thought came to mind as I changed the subject. “Civil war might even break out while you’re there.”
“That’s all the more reason to go!” Breale cried. “We have to get in all those sweet academy memories before Verol explodes, and this might be our only chance! And what else would we do? Andril has way more pull politically, and he’ll probably be basing himself in Minua anyway. There’s no point in just wasting our time while we’re there. It’s not like I even need to physically go to Cice to hear my father’s opinions on this. In fact, I can almost guarantee what side he’d be on, and it’s not the Senate’s.”
“How come I feel like that first reason was your favourite?”
“And you’re attending too! You’ve already enrolled, after all, and you can’t just leave me and Auro hanging by ourselves.”
“Breale, even still. What if they send assassins? They’ve done it before.”
This whole ordeal started after an attempted assassination after all. Or a successful one if Feanin was the target.
She scoffed in reply.
“Assassins in the academy? Now that would be an achievement. I’ve heard it sits so far above the city that only a single path could be carved to it. They’d have to be able to fly to sneak anything in, because I’ve heard that one path that reaches up is heavily guarded.”
It was that isolated? I supposed that would explain why Auro didn’t have that much information about it when I asked a few weeks ago. They’d have to infiltrate a student or staff if they wanted to get at us, and I wasn’t sure if Auro, the Maverick’s and I were large enough targets to jump through that many hoops. Andril yes, but it didn’t sound like he would be joining us there.
But that was still a risk I wasn’t sure if I wanted. It also might imply that our access to the town would be limited, which would make gathering the necessary ingredients for our potion much harder than necessary. At the very least I’d have to talk to Gideon about it.
“I really don’t know, Bre.” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
For some reason the Maverick turned away at that, and I almost thought I caught a tinge of red to her cheeks, though it was probably the chill.
“Ah, well, you’ll have quite a bit of time for that I guess.” She said eventually.
We waited for a while on the back of the wagon like that, watching as the light gradually dimmed. Though we couldn’t see the sun or either of the moons for all the snow, mist, and clouds, the deep reds and orange of the setting star filtered through regardless, plunging all the air around the wagon into brilliant warm hues. The winds momentarily slackened to a stiff breeze as well, leaving only a gentle snowfall and the occasional burst of thunder to watch as the world slipped into a thoughtful twilight.
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In Verol, it was said that each star had a mountain to call its own, one that was said to reach towards it in longing. Some of these were known: Andorlin sat below Brionin’s Peak, Celrion’s was just to the east of Minua, Esilmor’s was above Erithine in the north of Summark, and Verol was supposedly built below the Everstar’s own. At times like this then, in the calming hues of the setting sun, I had to wonder which mountain reached towards the Sun as its master. Was it known? Was the Sun even counted as a star here?
The winds picked up again, and the heavy whistle of the far off peaks again howled through the valley. It sounded to my ears like a fast paced flute, punctuated by the occasional percussive force of thunder.
“The mountain-song almost sounds like a march.” I commented. “I wonder if all the duchies have their own unique songs.”
“It’s not just each duchy- every town has its own. Even Cice sounds different from Andorlin in the winter storms, the eastern Paiz Mountains twisting them into a higher pitch.” Breale smiled to herself, as if remembering a different song. “Though I would count Cyrstil’s as my favourite.”
“Cyrstil?” I tried to remember the name, only a vague description of ‘far south Summark’ coming to mind. “What do their’s sound like?”
“Like chimes and horns” Breale kicked her foot out to catch a snowflake, seemingly happy for the moment. “They’ve set bells and wind-whistles up in the mountains, and the whole of the Pass of Laphrn fills with music when the winds pick up. It’s like standing in between the world’s largest band.”
“That sounds grand.” I tried to imagine a valley filled with such sounds, wondering how different it would be to what I heard now. “Maybe I’ll have to visit once this all blows over.”
Even Saphry, as far as I knew, had never visited the far corners of Summark, let alone Verol. There probably wouldn’t be time for it sadly, but if I were to stay longer I would greatly like to see them.
“I’m sure we could all go during holidays while we stay at the academy.” Breale beamed. “You, me, Auro, maybe brother.”
“If I stay at the academy.” I corrected. It was probably smart to temper expectations beforehand, in case Gideon and I decided otherwise. “Though that would again run into the risk of assassination or kidnapping…”
Before she could respond, Fredrick's voice came in over the winds.
“Sister? It’s your turn to drive.”
She sighed.
“Coming!” Breale jumped up to go, pausing in the threshold for a mere moment. “Just think about it, alright? It couldn’t hurt, Saps.”
“Sure, sure.” I said as I watched her disappear back inside the wagon. “But I’m not sure it’d help.”
…
Thankfully enough, the storm did eventually begin to clear up.
It was still cloudy, of course, but the wind, thunder, and snowfall had subsided by some amount. Even now, I thought I could almost make out the light of a star or two inbetween the dark clouds above.
We had slept on the wagon as we rode, only stopping two or three times a day so as to beat our potential pursuers. As we travelled, Hans taught each of us how to maintenance the wagon and repair broken wheels, which wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be, and even now I stood at the helm while the rest of the party except for Gideon slept.
Sometime a few days ago we had finished our descent into the largest river valley inside Verol, a route populated only by isolated farms and the occasional cliffside village, but only in the last day had the fog and snow finally dispersed enough for me to actually see it.
The mountains on either side of us, of course, were mind-splittingly huge. They stretched so far into the heavens that even halfway up was hidden by ceilings of clouds, white and majestic like the spine of some great beast. Smaller mountains, though still colossal in their own rights, flanked the immediate flask of the valley, sometimes cutting in to form vales and gullies coated in whitewood trees and gentle slopes. Some of these had strange formations of wizened towers upon them as well, crafted carefully to blend into the hills they sat upon.. These Hans was sure to point out whenever we passed, telling of the ancient legends of now forgotten builders and architects.
As for the valleys and vales we walked through, the land was mostly covered in scattered copses of trees, each one covered in shining white pine needles and populated by birds that almost looked to burn with fire in the moonlight. Snow laid thick upon the ground, and the air remained crisp and fresh throughout, and the gentle sound of soothing winds and bird song gradually overtook the cacophony of the storm as it died. The river Verie that flowed between the hills had a pleasant shape to it, about a hundred metres wide and fast flowing enough to keep from being frozen underneath. Of this we stayed just a couple dozen metres from the bank on what I was told were roads in warmer times, though I could only see carpets of snow. Thankfully, the Colgs seemed accustomed to finding shallower paths to pull us through, so we didn’t get stuck very often.
Colgs themselves were remarkable creatures, I had quickly learned. Hooved like a horse and with the wings and face of a gliding hawk, they were intelligent and apparently even able to glide for a minute or two with a lightly equipped man on the back. Gideon had told of their innate magical enchantments they weaved that allowed them to do so, but even without those they were extremely strong and lighter than one would expect. The only downsides to a good horse I could see would be that they seemed quite a bit more fragile and skittish.
If I recall correctly, there are war-breeds in Fanula and Doux-Burgund better suited for combat. Gideon remarked. I’ve flown beside some who can carry a man and his spear for over half an hour of gliding before it needed to rest. Now, it greatly depends on the battlefield if it's effective or not, but a charge from above is devastating beyond belief…
“Uh-huh.” I snapped my head up again, trying not to give into the temptation of sleep. From its brief glimpses in between the clouds, I knew the moons were almost at their zeniths in the sky. “Wait, you’ve flown with some?”
Of course. After a few seconds, Gideon’s voice returned, noticeably confused. Well, Silst has when he still lived in the Northspine.
“And that’s near Doux-Burgund?”
Even still, I wasn’t too up to date on the geography of the kingdom, let alone places outside its reach. That wasn’t helped by the isolated and treacherous terrain of much of the kingdom, which led to most maps just filling in unexplored parts of the land with presumed mountains, but I really should at the very least know the duchies and kingdoms around.
The Northspine is far to the north, past the forests of Fangpeak and the mountain of Norrin. Doux-Burgund’s eastern border is just a few dozen derizdrkmor to the west of that hold.
I raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar term, though he couldn’t see it from his perch on my head.
“The [fuck] is a deritzderksmore?”
Ah, I mean a hundred kilometres or so.
I glanced at the drake before returning my gaze to the road ahead. Ever since we’d been reunited, Gideon had been substituting more and more thoughts with foreign words, not to mention his now constant mentioning of Silst’s memories as his own. It was enough to make me worry, even as tired as I currently was, but I didn’t really know what I could do about it.
“Has Silst been in a lot of battles, then?” I asked, filing away my paranoia for another time. “What were they like?”
I wouldn’t say a lot, but I’ve- Silst has seen his fair share. The vast majority have been against the tribes that roam the north and east. Battles between the civilised races involve much more complex magical interactions I believe.
“Well, that brings about eight thousand more questions than answers.”
Vibrations from the drake’s chuckling shook my head, and I picked Gideon up to look at him more directly.
“Alright, tribes of horrors? What are those? Are they human? Dwarf? Why did he fight against them so much? And what are the ‘civilised races’ composed of? What kind of changes does magic bring?”
Have you really not seen any of this from Saphry’s memories? Explaining literally everything to you is really getting annoying.
“Between the mundanity of her life and the nightmares, I think I’m just about out of knowledge dumps. And I don’t really want to hear these coming from the guy who got all the cool powers without any of the responsibility.”
From my point of view, explaining what Saphry should’ve already known was practically Gideon’s only purpose in Elys. It was almost like God had divinely ordained him to act as a flying encyclopaedia.
Personally, I think babysitting you has turned out to be a full time job thus far.
“I mean, you have nothing else to do.”
Fine, fine. But where to start? Gideon fidgeted in my arms until he was comfortable with his front legs hanging over my arm. First: do you know what destroyed Tresti?
I thought back to the few conversations I’d been a part of that mentioned the eastern kingdoms before tilting my head at the drake.
“Giant tribes? I was thinking of something like that titan show, the one with the walls.”
Incorrect! He attempted to cross his front legs, almost managing to make an ‘X’ with them. There are giants among them, no doubt about it, but they are only one of the threats coming out of the Mornamel Mountains. All manner of twisted monster has emerged from under the earth to assault Brionin’s Wall. And even a few enthralled human kingdoms, if my friend Derizvelo is to be believed.
Derizvelo? Wasn’t that the name of Broth- I mean Corto’s drake companion? I suppose it would make sense for the two to be friends, given how close they were all the time. It wasn’t like there were dozens of dragons in the city.
“So is this a demon king thing then? Is Sauron waiting somewhere out there? I might want to start looking for a magic sword or something before we travel out there for the big adventure…”
Gideon struggled out of my hands with a scoff, sitting on the bench beside me.
I know you’re joking, but I would purge any thoughts of descending Brionin’s Wall from your mind. After you get off the Veroline plateau the land turns warm and fell, a place where shadows haunt every footstep. Even before Tresti was lost my kind counted it as a dim kingdom filled with cutthroats and barbarity. There is no reason, save suicide, to travel to such a place.
Well, that was depressing.
As far as I know, though, there is no single ruler. They do combine on occasion to throw themselves against civilization, against humans, dwarves, and dragons alike, but such waves are thankfully rare. Still, that is the main threat that the dragons of the Northspine in the north and Summark in the south defend against.
From how Gideon described it, it didn’t sound like a huge threat to the mountain kingdom. Which made Caldor’s words to me all the more confusing. Why would Summark need to be saved from a bunch of disorganised barbarians and monsters who would have to climb past a dozen mountain forts to even get to Summark? Or was that not the real threat to the Mark, but something more hidden?
Ah, whatever it was was really my problem anyway, but the people of this world. I wasn’t divinely placed here or anything, nor could I realistically change what untold numbers of years of war had done.
“So, Sil, have-”
Are you really shortening a single syllable word?
“-you thought about the academy at all?” I asked, ignoring him. “We’ll be there before the month is out, so it might do to see if we even want to attend?”
The drake glanced up at me strangely, as if that were a weird question to ask.
Why wouldn’t we? Even if it turns out that you can’t leave -which very well may happen with the scheming of the senate- I can still look around by myself. You won’t be needed for shopping.
“That’s kind of what I’m scared of.” I said. “I don’t want to just sit up in some high tower while you do all the work. And Minua might be a little too close to Verol to just walk through town.”
It was a selfish desire, I knew, but I was really getting tired of being the useless member of the party, and the academy was sounding like more of the same.
I’ll still need help isolating the ingredients and setting up experiments. Gideon tilted his head towards me. What’s with this sudden obsession with helping, anyway? You’ve been the number one proponent of procrastinating this.
“Maybe that’s why?” I said. “I’m fairly sure Andorlin is just as large as Minua too, and I’d have more influence there. And I’d probably be safer on the streets. There’s no reason not to just skip the school.”
You’re not just trying to get out of homework, right? Because that’s the least you could-
“Of course not!” I snapped. “I might be a college student, but I have standards. It just doesn’t seem to have that many pros.”
Didn’t we talk about this a few weeks ago? I seem to recall having this exact same conversation and deciding to go ahead with the academy plan for Saphry’s sake.
“The situation was different then!”
And yet, Saphry was wanting to go, wasn’t she?
I closed my eyes, remembering all too well Saphry’s desire to attend. Not only her too, Saphry’s father and Marcolo had also been in favour of it. The plan had even been in the works for years at this point, as they waited for the academy to accept a new class. In that light, wouldn’t it be a grave disservice to my host body to not go? Did I really have that right?
“God damn it, am I cursed to suffer through another layer of school every time I finish the last?”
Then you’ll go?
I sighed.
“I suppose I might.”