G. Kelly - Sword and Circle

Tyrane stood to attention and saluted. “Honour to you, my lord, and to the crown.”

Gawain nodded politely, turned, and walked back to the horses, mounting swiftly. Allazar was already in the saddle and gazing upward. If the wizard was apprehensive, he didn’t show it.

“Stay close to the wall on the ascent, Allazar, I’ll lead with the pack-horse between us. If you’ve no head for heights, don’t look down, or outward. It’s a long way up. And a long way down.”

And with that, Gwyn stepped forward, Gawain holding the trailing reins of the pack-horse, and the two men and three horses threaded their way through the makeshift obstacles Tyrane had set at the foot of the pass. Then, as the road began to slope and they were on the Pass proper, Gawain thought he heard Allazar take a deep breath. He didn’t blame him.

The sun met them halfway up, and Gawain paused for his Remembrance. Last time making this climb, he and Gwyn had sprinted up the pass, almost beating the sun to the top. At such altitude, the sun rose earlier than it did below. But this time, horse and rider knew what awaited them, and were in no hurry. Gawain heard a sudden gasp from behind, snapped his eyes open and twisted in his saddle. Only to see Allazar, himself twisted around in his saddle, gazing in awe at the spectacle of the Sea of Hope at dawn, sparkling like a vast and undulating carpet of glittering blue diamonds in the south. From any other place, at any other time, it would have been a welcome and wondrous sight. But today, Gawain sighed and turned and eased Gwyn onwards and upwards, for today it meant only that they were nearing the horror that awaited them above.

Near the crest of the Pass, a sharp bend in the track and a gentler slope, the final approaches to the summit, and here, where the track ran almost arrow-straight to the top, Allazar gasped again, and Gawain’s stomach sank. From horizon to horizon, nothing could be seen. Gawain, of course, had expected the desolation, but even he had tried to hide the worst of it in the dimmest corners of his memory.

They rode in silence past the area where once the large and brightly painted shed had received, recorded and examined all visitors and goods incoming and outbound. Gwyn’s head bobbed, and drooped, and when they reached the cobbled square which had once marked the centre of the bustling market town of Downland, Gawain brought Gwyn to a halt, and let out a long and shuddering sigh.

Allazar drew alongside the younger man, his eyes watering, head swinging this way and that, but to his credit, the wizard made no attempt to speak. There were no words of comfort in any language which could possibly alleviate the pain and utter desolation of the place.

In truth, a year’s turning of the world about the sun had wrought some small changes to Gawain’s eye. The obscene white ash which once covered every inch of the land was gone, blown by salt south winds in summer and cold wet northerly gales in winter. Yet though the ash had gone, and no longer swirled underfoot, the land had a bleached and sterile appearance, like hard-baked clay, or vitrified sand.

Gawain took a long pull from a water skin and offered it to Allazar, who simply shook his head and continued staring about him in utter disbelief.

“Yonde…” Gawain coughed as his throat threatened to choke on the words. “Yonder is the road we take, southwest, to the Farin Bridge, thence south to the castletown.”

Allazar noted the bleached cobbled road, wagon ruts worn deep from centuries of travel still plainly visible, frozen in stone perhaps for all time. It stretched away, undulating slightly, and here and there in the distance he could see shadows throwing into relief such contours in the landscape as there were. Here and there, around the cobbled square, were traces and shapes in the ground, marking the foundations of the more substantial stone buildings that had once stood here. Yet nothing taller than a few bleached and blasted rocks could be seen, all the way to the far horizon. And not a blade of grass.

Gawain shivered, and eyed the sky. It was cloudy, and looking away to the northeast, great billowing clouds seemed to be roiling up over the distant plains of Callodon beyond the forest far below.

“Will it rain?” Allazar whispered, as though to speak any louder would profane the memory of all those whose lives had ended here.

Gawain shrugged. “Probably. Most of the rainfall we enjoyed came from the south, warm air from the sea rising up over the cliffs. But in winter, there were gales and squalls a-plenty from the north too. Usually,” Gawain cleared his throat again, “Usually such easterly storms blew themselves out before troubling us, but that one looks big enough to carry all the way. Come,” he announced, sitting taller in the saddle and hanging the water skin back in its place on his saddle, “It does no good to tarry here.”

Their progress along the road to Raheen Castletown was steady, and made entirely in silence but for the eerie clattering of steel-shod hooves on the cobbles. From time to time, Gawain’s head swung suddenly here, suddenly there, as if remembering a place, or a person, or some event he had experienced long ago, or looking for signs that such a place had even existed at all. Once, Allazar sneaked a look at the young man’s face, and thought he caught sight of tears welling in Gawain’s eyes. But the wizard was fighting his own silent battle against the pricking at the back of his own eyes, and hurriedly turned his attention back to the road, and keeping the pack-horse close.

For Gawain, this time there was no urge to launch Gwyn into a mad dash to the Keep. How she had survived the seemingly endless gallop from Downland to the Keep along this very same road a year ago, he did not know. Perhaps it was a testament to the wonder that was a Raheen charger, or perhaps some other, unseen force had kept poor Gwyn’s heart from bursting. Whatever the reason, this time both of them knew what awaited them, and neither were in any hurry to reach the ruins that lay at the end of this ancient road.

From time to time, Gwyn paused, her mount lost in thought, and Allazar simply waited quietly and patiently until they moved off again. Once, they stopped to water the horses, which took a little more time. Neither man seemed anxious to dismount, as though stepping on the ground anywhere here in Raheen were sacrilege. But dismount they did, and while the horses drank their fill, Gawain nodded towards a spot in the road which seemed to rise above the rest.

“The Farin Bridge,” he declared, shielding his eyes against the glare. “Another few hours and we’ll be there.”

Allazar simply nodded, eyeing the storm in the east before securing the water skins and checking the packs before they set off again. They walked the horses for a while until finally the eerie sensation of stepping on the bleached cobbles proved too much for them, and they mounted, and continued at a canter.

The bridge was low and massively built, and was of simple construction with no side walls. Three arches spanned the Stryris at a narrow but quite deep point in its course where the river began to swing west on its journey to the distant falls. Much to Gawain’s surprise, the waters ran crystal clear, nothing at all like the vile white-brown ooze of a year ago.

“It seems I was overly cautious with our supplies,” he said softly, pausing at the middle of the bridge to gaze over the edge into the depths beneath.

“Nature will prevail, Longsword, though it may take many lifetimes. Nature always prevails.”

Gawain sighed, and Gwyn moved onward, only to come to a halt again perhaps a dozen yards along the road from the castletown side of the bridge. The young warrior king turned his horse and gazed at the foot of the bridge suspiciously.