On the first day of spring, a force of thirty riders gathered outside of the main gate of Sovereign in light armour and travelling attire, though they kept their swords and their shields. At their head, Sir Gregory Anselm and Arthur Ashfield stood by two wagons filled with provisions and accounted for their contents on a scroll of paper, and by them Lady Ethelyn sat upon a black horse in a cloak of grey fur.

“He’s late,” Ethelyn said, looking up at the way the sun rose in the eastern sky.

“Not surprising,” Sir Anselm replied as he lifted the lid on a small barrel of dried goods. He counted them quickly – or at least estimated how many were in there, then gestured a figure for Arthur to write down on the scroll. “He has more to pack,” he said, then laughed.

Ethelyn gave a slight shake of her head. “No…” She murmured, the echoes of his feelings reaching her own. “He’s not sure whether to come. He’s considering staying here.”

Both Gregory and Arthur paused what they were doing, looked at each other, then looked at Ethelyn. “You think he’s changed his mind?” Asked Arthur.

Ethelyn remained silent for a moment, then shook her head. “No. He’ll come,” she decided, then turned her horse and spurred it on towards the gate.

It was almost an hour later when Caden finally rode out through the open gate, alone and wearing a thick brown cloak of fur that he had wrapped around a suit of leather and chain. The snows had melted by that point, yet his eyes brought coldness when Ethelyn looked upon them, and she felt herself shivering under her own cloak as Caden rode out to meet her.

“What about your brother?” Ethelyn asked him, and at the same time she looked up to see Jaqueline standing on the top of Sovereign’s grey stone walls. The Queen was looking down upon them with two men from her personal guard flanking her at either side and Ethelyn could not help but notice that Caden made no attempt to look back at her.

“We’ve said our goodbyes,” Caden told her. “He doesn’t like these grand farewells. Is everything ready?”

Ethelyn nodded. “I believe so,” she said, and turned to see that Sir Anselm and Arthur were only waiting for Caden’s command to start moving.

“Good,” Caden replied. “Let’s go.”

With his brown hair blowing in the morning breeze, Caden rode out along past the wagons and the men that made up his guard and continued on down the road that left the city. Ethelyn turned and rode with him and as soon as the two had passed the rest of the column it began moving after them – wagon wheels creaking against the uneven road.

Caden’s Company – for that is what they had named themselves on this venture of theirs – travelled east for nearly a week towards the border of Sarkana and Lavell. There, as Sarkana’s rugged highlands lowered into Lavell’s quaint countryside, they crossed a bridge guarded by Sarkanian troops and travelled north-east for five more days. They did not venture towards Chaverne, for that lay too far to the south of their destination, but passed other towns, and other cities, that because of the decisiveness of Valen’s victories and Caden’s marriage to Jaqueline, had become part of Caden’s realm without so much as a street brawl.

Caden did not know those lands, not like he knew Sarkana, yet as they travelled, he learned. He learned of their regions, their terrain, their landmarks. He learned the names of the towns, and who governed them, and what they produced to trade. He saw shepherds tending to the year’s new lambs, and calves being born in the fields, and Lavellan children playing in the woods that ran alongside the road. Caden had to wonder: did they hate him? Was he their tyrant, their oppressor? Or was he the one who brought them peace?

As Caden’s Company continued to travel north the Black Mountains rose before them – inching higher with every mile until they were a vast and overwhelming wall that cut their southern lands off from the rest of the world. Those mountains, still snow-capped, were dark grey and onyx, and steep and impenetrable, and as northern Lavell rose up to meet the base of them, the green of the land wore away as though some earthen corruption of soil and rock was spreading south.

When they reached the mountains, they followed a narrow road along them for half a day until they came upon a camp surrounded by a palisade wall in which the one hundred guards of the Philosopher King had wintered. They had set up strong, permanent tents there – thick and round and covered in hides, with well-built hearths dug into the earth and surrounded by stone, and even small storage huts made of timber in which they stored their winter supplies and their firewood.

“Caden, King of Sarkana,” called out one of the foreign knights in his wolf-inspired armour, “the Philosopher King has been expecting you.”

“Are we late?” Caden asked, as he led his mounted riders through the field of cleared trees, where hundreds of wooden stumps sat under the canopy of the sky.

“Not late,” said the knight in his foreign accent. “On time.”

“Is the Philosopher King here?” Caden asked, bringing his company to a halt.

“He is, but you cannot see him,” the knight revealed.

“Why not?” Asked Caden, his head tilted slightly.

“He meditates on our futures,” said the knight.

“What does that mean?” Caden asked, growing slightly frustrated by the knight’s indirect mannerism.

“It means he’s resting,” Ethelyn finally told him, then dismounted her horse. “We should camp here tonight, Sire, for there will be no more travel until the morning.”

Sir Anselm looked then at Caden, as though trying to see for himself just what weight the sorceress’s words had on his King. Caden saw this and looked back at him, and then gave a capitulating shrug as he said, “she’s right. We’ll camp here.”

That night they camped in tents of linen sheets just outside the palisade walls of the Philosopher King’s men. The nights were not yet warm, but even so close to the mountains they did not reach the freezing temperatures of the winter just gone. Caden’s Kingsguard sat around campfires and sang and ate fire-roasted game that their hunters had been able to procure, and when the night grew on and his men lay sleeping, Caden saw Ethelyn walk quietly through the night in her crimson gown. In the moonlight she had an ephemeral, ghostly quality – like some murdered maiden searching the empty fields for her killer – but when she passed into the shadow, she became a woman again.

She knew that he was watching her and he in turn knew that she knew. As he sat huddled around his fire, eyeing her in the distance, he could feel the cool night air against her face and throat and the warmth of the flames echoing back to him through her hands. Caden slipped his hand into his shirt and ran his fingers gently over his scar and as Ethelyn went into the Philosopher King’s camp his thoughts returned to the wound that had caused it, and that instant of overwhelming pain he had felt before an eternity of nothing.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Came a voice from beside him, the youthful tone belonging to Arthur Ashfield, who prodded at the fire with a stick.

“What do you mean?” Caden asked, giving Arthur a quick glance.

“You don’t have to pretend, Sire. I’ve seen the way the two of you watch each other, as though you’re both wrapped up around each other’s fingers but too awkward to admit it.”

“You seem to forget that I’m married,” said Caden.

“Of course,” said Arthur. “I apologize. Goodnight, Sire.”

The next morning Caden and his men had woken up early to eat breakfast and break their camp, and as they finished packing their belongings onto their horses and wagons, the Philosopher King’s men marched out from behind their camp walls on foot. Only two of them, each wearing a silver mask, were on horseback – and one was at the front of the column, while the other was at the rear. They marched in perfect synchronicity, in perfect form, as though the aesthetics of their travelling in the new spring was as important to them as the practicality of it.

They came to a momentary halt when the silver mask at the front of the column reached Caden, and Caden gave a slight bow to him. “Do I speak to the Philosopher King, or his Herald?” He asked.

“Both,” the man replied, with a voice too obscured by his mask for Caden to determine the truth of it. “It is only a day’s march to the pass,” he said, “after that we will not be needing horses.”

Caden gave a nod in response, then mounted his horse and gestured for his companions to do the same. Then, when all were ready, they accompanied the Philosopher King’s march towards the north, leaving the remnants of his camp in the clearing behind them.

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As they began to climb higher into the southern side of the mountains the air grew steadily more chilled until, despite being in spring, snow began to fall gently upon the travellers. Caden and his men wrapped themselves in their fur as their breaths became misty, and when Caden looked across at Ethelyn he found that she had in her hand some small glass orb that seemed to contain a dancing flame.

“What is that?” Caden asked her, for he could feel the warmth she gained from it. “Sorcery?”

Ethelyn smiled. “Something of the like,” she told him. “But not entirely. Here, so close to the mountains, I can feel the energies of my homelands leaking through into yours. Little by little, sorcery becomes possible again. Real sorcery that is, not the petty illusions that you have experienced.”

“What is this so-called ‘real sorcery’?” Asked Caden. “What magic do you cast? Do you wield lightning and fire, cast waves high enough to sink ships? What is sorcery, exactly?”

The sorceress shook her head. “It is the manipulation of a stone to cause a landslide, a whisper that brings an avalanche in the mountains. It is the sparking ember that starts a wildfire. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Caden watched her for a moment, trying to unravel the secrets of her spirit. Then he turned away and kept riding.

Eventually the road they took turned to little more than a trail and from there to nothing but rocky, undulating ground. The cold earth grew increasingly covered by sharp stones and dangerous pits and holes that forced Caden and his men dismount their horses and send them with three of their number to find the nearest village. They abandoned their wagons too, which by then were largely empty of the provisions they had set out with and packed whatever remained for carrying on foot.

“Do you think the horses will be taken back home?” Asked Arthur, having grown quite fond of his.

“They’ll be taken to some stable or another, lad,” said Anselm. “There’ll always be another horse somewhere.”

They kept marching through the afternoon, the temperature lowering with the sun, until by the early evening it was almost as frozen as the winter had been. It was just as the sun was setting that they came upon their destination, a run-down stone gate built against the dark grey rock of the mountain walls. It was half-crumbling and had clearly been in a state of disrepair for some time, despite the presence of flaming braziers along the top of the gate and cloaked figures with bows.

The gate had once been part of a small fortress, and as Caden looked around he could see the remains of where the wall had once circled a courtyard, and where a second gate had once stood. Now there was only a tower set into the remaining wall that blocked off the mountain pass beyond and a few permanent tents on the south side of it.

“I imagine we’ll have to camp here,” Caden said to Anselm and Arthur, and watched as two men in those dark cloaks and hoods came out of the tower and walked to where the Philosopher King’s Herald, or perhaps the man himself, stepped out of the column of his men. It was then that Caden realized that although the second masked man should have been present with the company, he could not see him anywhere.

“This pass will be far warmer and more pleasant by the time summer comes,” Ethelyn said. “It’s a pity we cannot wait for it to grow more inviting.”

Caden looked around them. “Ethelyn, I would quite like to speak to the Philosopher King,” he told her. “Can you not organize a meeting? We have marched all this way, and have much farther still to march, and I have yet to even see him. All I see is a man in a silver mask, with no way of knowing who wears it.”

“It’s a ploy,” Ethelyn told him. “Think on it, Sire: if you wished to kill a man, but there were seemingly two of them, how would you know which was the real one to kill?”

“But that would only delay an assassination and only lower the chance of success by half. If he truly wanted to remain incognito, then why do not all his men wear…” Caden’s words trailed off with a realization and Ethelyn smiled at him in acknowledgement.

“Exactly,” said Ethelyn.

Caden looked back at the man in the silver mask again and this time saw the second one standing not too far away and giving orders to his men, though Caden could have sworn he had not been there a moment before. The first was still conversing with the cloaked men, but slowly the Philosopher King’s knights were beginning to disperse across the courtyard and set up the tents they had carried with them. Caden turned to his own guard and gave the same order and looked back to the Herald to find that he was now gesturing for Caden to approach him, and that the cloaked man by the Herald’s side was watching him with an unusual intensity.

Caden found the audacity of the cloaked man’s stare almost unnerving and would steel himself to face him as if facing an enemy on the battlefield. He walked across to meet them; not smiling, but neither showing any of the signs of discomfort that he felt. “Hello,” he greeted as he reached them and gave the two of them a slight nod. “What is it you need, Herald?”

The Herald looked at Caden, though if he had an expression there was no way to see it through that veil of silver. “This is Eser Vir,” the Herald said, his voice as masked as his face as he introduced the man in the cloak. “He is one of the Black Wardens here.”

Caden looked then to the cloaked man, a wild and ragged looking fellow with shoulder-length dark hair and an unshaven face. His eyes were deep green, and he had high cheek bones and a strong jaw with a noticeably cleft chin. “You are well met, Eser Vir,” Caden told him. “You are a Black Warden?”

Eser Vir kept watching Caden and it was during those seconds of silence after he finished speaking that Caden realized why he felt so uncomfortable by the warden’s gaze. Eser Vir was sizing him, testing him with a steeled, eagle eye like a wolf would size a potential meal, and he also searched the unnatural white of Caden’s own eyes as though he wished to test they did not belong to something evil, or were not evil in themselves.

“And you are said to be the new king of this land, south of the mountains?” Eser Vir finally replied, with a voice that sounded the way his face looked – tough and coarse.

“Not of this land,” Caden corrected him. “Not yet.”

“But soon, no?” Asked the warden.

Caden did not answer and the Herald took the opportunity of his silence to speak. “Tomorrow we begin our journey through the pass,” the Herald said. “Eser Vir will be our guide.”

“Guide?” Asked Caden, glancing at the Black Warden. “Do we have need of one?”

“The pass has not yet opened up,” Eser Vir revealed. “The winter still lingers in the mountains, and we Black Wardens have yet been unable to make the pass safe. You bring many soldiers, which is good, but with the snows yet to melt you will still need me to guide you through the dangers that wait.”

“The dangers?” Asked Caden. “Surely there are no dangers except the cold? And we bring warmth with us.”

The Black Warden smiled. “Few travel the mountains, but even so I would have expected a king to be more learned about them when they linger on the edge of his kingdom. Sub-human tribes dwell in the Black Mountains, Sire, and when the winter closes its passes off to us, it opens them to a violent and savage race.”

Caden at first thought Eser Vir to be telling a children’s tale made to scare him into compliance, but as he looked, he saw nothing but honesty in the warden’s face. “Who are these tribes?” He asked apprehensively.

“Natives of the mountains, we think. Some of the wardens have taken to calling them Dwellers, and when spring melts the snows they retreat deeper into the mountains. They still venture down occasionally, but we drive them away,” Eser Vir explained.

“The first time we journeyed here in the late spring,” the Herald said. “But we can no longer afford to wait that long.”

“And why is that?” Caden asked, directing a sudden tone of frustration at the masked man. “We are to make this journey while it is still significantly dangerous to do so and I have not even been told why. We have been marching for a day and the Philosopher has yet to even show his face to greet me. I am not some low-ranking captain, Herald, I am the King of Sarkana.”

The Herald stared at Caden then, as though the man’s words were of such astounding impiety and stupidity that he could scarce believe they were spoken. “He… Is the Philosopher King,” the Herald told him. “He is the one who has united a hundred kings beneath him, who has ruled over a millennium of peace, who has saved us from disasters of unimaginable proportions. His wisdom is beyond your comprehension, and if he does not do something it is because he has decided not to do it. You should not question him; you should trust him.”

“That he does,” said Ethelyn, who had wandered close to the three men out of some feline curiosity. “Come, Sire, we should prepare for the evening meal,” she told Caden, immediately defusing what had threatened to become an argument because none of the men there dared to act against her chosen outcome. Even the Herald, Caden noticed, seemed as wary of crossing her as he would the Philosopher King himself.

“Very well, Ethelyn,” Caden said, though he turned to look at the Herald a final time before leaving with her. “I’m sure there will be ample opportunity to speak with him over the coming days.”

Ethelyn waited to ensure Caden was following her before she walked back to where their camp was being made and when they had put some distance between themselves and the Herald she scolded him harshly.

“You’ve been in your fair share of negotiations. You’ve seen politics and fought in wars,” she told him, and Caden could feel the anger in her eyes even without even seeing them. “So you should know all too well the importance of being a united front, especially in the face of those who are not necessarily on your side.”

Caden seemed confused for a moment, but as they reached a newly lit fire and sat together around it, he looked back at the wardens along the top of the crumbling gate. “You don’t trust the Black Wardens?”

“They have given me no reason not to trust them,” Ethelyn said. “Yet similarly-“

“They have given you no reason to trust them either,” Caden finished for her. “And a winter pass is the perfect place for an ambush.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think they will. It would be paranoid to assume so. But while your eyes are open, you might as well spend the occasional moment watching them.”

“I don’t trust that Eser Vir,” Caden said as he slowly shook his head. “He sees more than he lets on, and the fact he doesn’t let on makes me nervous.”

“Of course he does,” Ethelyn told him. “They all do. They are Wardens – it is their duty to see more.”

“No. It’s not just that,” he said, even then noticing Eser Vir watching him across the ground. “He knows something that you and I don’t.”

Ethelyn seemed to take Caden seriously then and her expression changed from mostly indifferent to as alert as a hare in the twilight. Yet before she could say anything, or do anything, one of Caden’s men approached them.

“Sire,” the knight said, “we’ve readied your tent for you.”

“Thank you,” Caden said, and prodded the fire as the knight bowed and left. “I think I’ll try and sleep before we eat.”

“A wise strategy,” Ethelyn told him.

“Do you want to come with me?” He asked, his words spoken almost from nowhere. Ethelyn did not seem shocked to hear them though, and only raised a hand to sweep a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Is that a command, Lord King?” She asked him.

Caden thought for a moment. “No. It isn’t,” he said.

“Then perhaps another time.”

Ethelyn then stood and, though she did not show signs of having taken offence, walked away from the fire and left Caden sitting there alone.