Chapter 2.4

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Krast was no more than a road with a few small side streets, all lined by hovels which seemed to have grown from the mud. In summer, I remembered, open-sided tents crowded the main street, their meager stores filling the needs of the village, the castle, and the few outlaws who slipped over the mountains to sell smuggled goods. Under the almost-winter sky, however, the town was empty, showing little life beyond the tavern. A tiny church, large enough to hod a dozen Christians if they didn’t breathe too hard, huddled on one side of the road, and a Bardhall, barely any larger, crouched on the other.

This was a people barely religious enough for the necessities of life.

The road wound up from the village, bordered on either side by thorny bushes and flinty rocks. We climbed it slowly, listening as rocks rattled down the slope and struck the carriage. Most were pebbles, but a few were large enough to rock us, and I heard the swearing of the men on top.

Finally we came to the black fortress walls, and turned into the maw of the beast. We rattled through the gatehouse, and came to rest in the bailey. The carriage door was opened – by James, and not by a servant of the castle.

I stepped out. The only person I saw was a stable hand, who ambled over as he wiped his hands on his dirty tunic. "An’ what be yer business here?"

I couldn’t see soldiers, but I was aware of the arrow slits in the wall behind me. When I brandished my lord’s letter, with its wax seal and ribbons, it was as much for them as for the servant.

"What would Ay be wantin’ with thet?" the stablehand asked.

"We wish to see Lord Guerney," Charles said for me.

"Ay’ll send word thet yer here." He turned away.

"We wish to be taken to him," Charles said. "Immediately."

The stable hand looked back.

Charles drew his sword and knelt before it. This was not a threat, but a statement that as a knight of the realm, he had the right of audience with any man in fealty to the High King.

The stable hand shrugged. "M’lord is at leisure in his hall."

Charles stood and replaced his sword. "Then show us the way."

Chapter 2.3

"Ye’d better get in." James rubbed the bow in his hands. Other than for a pair of rabbits, he’d found no reason to use it.

I shook my head. I had been walking beside the carriage, a respite from the spine-crunching jolts, and saw no reason to give that up.

"Yeah, ye’d better be gettin’ yer ass back in." Ison shifted the heavy iron pike in his hands. For most of the trip it had been at hand beside him, but now he held it at arms.

Perhaps they expected trouble? I touched Geldswan, which I now wore openly. Its appearance brought no comment from my guard, other than a comment by Charles that I was wearing it on the wrong side. I restrained from showing him that my sword hand is sinister.

"See here." James leaned forward. "Ye jest can’t walk into the castle like a wanderin’ beggar. A man uf yer station needs to go in respectfully."

I looked sideways at him and growled. I can still do that; the old lord did not force me into complete silence.

"Yer an obstinate bastard," he chuckled.

My hands flew briskly, though he could not read them. "Do you know more of my parents than I?"

Ison leaned down. "Ye’d best not do that here. These mountain fold live by the Badlands, and they know all ‘bout wizards. They’ll say yer puttin’ a curse on ‘em. Get inta the carriage now – we’re almost on Krast."

Ten years and a lifetime before, I would have taken insult at this command, and tested his iron against my steel. As a true Bard, with the harp tattooed on the back of my hand, no one would have thought to dictation to me like that – but a burned gate cannot be locked. Regretfully I climbed back in, and turned my face to the window.

In the refuge of my mind, a dismal ballad took shape. There was the usual murder and mayhem, treachery between false friends, and jolting horseback rides through the soggy brown leaves of late fall. That I would never sing the words did not stop them from forming.

Charles slapped my knee, and when I turned to look, he held his hands a arm’s length apart. "Those rats had tails two feet long!"

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Chapter 2.2

On the afternoon of the third day, we were traveling at the base of the Dragon’s Mouth Mountains, a massif of sheer faces and summits which pierced the clouds, when Rockridge Castle, a black spider on a cliff of grey shale, came into view. It had not changed since that day, many years before, when I had visited it with Sharp – a fellow student, a good friend, and my traveling companion for several summers. Sharp had liked Rockridge, but I had been anxious to leave. The whole thing is built of rock and shadow, and even now it holds the taint of the twilight world. Treacheries are at home there, slithering down the halls like cold snakes in their pits, and untruths chirp like crickets beneath the stairs. No yule-fire could ever burn away the shadows of that place.

It’s outer curtain, a half-ring curving from the face of the mountain, has two stories. The upper half belongs to the soldiers, holding their barracks, armory, and storehouses. The lower hold stables and workshops. Eight observation towers rise from the wall, and from each arches a slender bridge to the main keep, the body of the spider. The kitchen sulks behind the keep, close to the moutain wall. Gardens – kitchen, herbal, ornamental, and trysting – cling to the slope above the castle, while deep in the stone beneath the keep lies the dungeons and torture rooms, so far below that the screams of the damned will not disturb the pleasure-seekers in the garden.

The keep itself has four towers. One holds the library and the chapel, a second holds Lord Guerney’s private rooms, the third is given over to the ladies and their servants, and the fourth is for the Steward, servants, and distinguished visitors.

Lord Guerney has many castles which perch on the spine of the mountains, but Rockridge is his seat and winter home. It guards a narrow pass to the Badlands, where gangs of bandits and wizard-kin live among thorns and prey on the weak. Below the pass huddled the town of Krast, where lived the families of those in Rockridge, both those who served Lord Guerney and those shut away in his dungeons.

And that was the monstrosity that my lord wanted to ally himself with.

Chapter 2.1

Author's note -- I assure you, when I have this printed up, I will not be heading each section with a number, i.e. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc. This is only for the blog.
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Two miles from the gates of Songless Castle, the road forks. One branch follows the Gateway upstream to Slattern. This is the road traveled when I came to Songless Castle, ten years and a lifetime ago. The other road swings south and below the Eastern Green Forest, then plods northeasterly through the foothills of the Dragon’s Mouth Mountains. This is the road we took for three long, jolting, jouncing days. My main entertainment was Charles, who told me again and again just how badly the last messenger had been treated.

Lord Reinard had only given up, with an angry flip of his hand, that his last messenger had not been treated well and that he had received no response to his inquiries. From Charles’ lips tumbled horrors. The messenger had been given a cold, tiny room to sleep in, one that overlooked the stableyard. Soldiers were posted outside his door, and he was not allowed to leave. His meals arrived cold and half-eaten. When he could leave, he returned to find personal items missing. On the fourth day, he woke to find rats in his room. When he complained about this treatment on the fifth day, he was severely beaten, dumped into a farm wagon, and sent home. At no time did he find anyone who would answer his questions.

My Lord Reinard is such a wise man. To people who will not talk, he send a messenger who cannot speak.

When I wasn’t listening to Charles’ chatter, I was staring at the withered countryside. The fields were stubbly, with harvest leavings scattered across the brown earth, and a cold wind harried the clumps of dead grass. Here and there a rotten apple lay in the dirt. Trees reached bare branches toward the heavy grey sky, pregnant with rain but unable to deliver. The landscape warned of storms raging before the week was through, then bitter cold. Poor omens for my journey.