The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (15 page)

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With a startled cry and a convulsive gasp, Yeva was thrown from the Realm and found herself lying on her back in her room. She was shivering and drenched with sweat. An unspecified terror was trying to consume her.

It is not uncommon to witness one’s possible death when floating in the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, and those deaths are almost always violent. Unless a person is of far reaching power and influence, a quiet death in one’s bed does not normally have sufficient power in the Realm to cause it to draw in the drifting awareness. It is this circumstance more than any other that makes it almost impossible for the majority of those familiar with the Realm to maintain the detached emotional attitude required to surrender into the tides of possibility and drift.

Yeva had witnessed such potential ends countless times in the years that she had been practicing this technique, but they had not broken her meditations and never before had she died twice in one meditative session.  Also never before had she envisioned the brilliant flare of color that had cast her so violently from her meditative state.  Color did not exist in the Realm, but that flare had been a deep and brilliant scarlet.  More important, though, was that the flash had been a message.  Yeva knew this to be true, and knew that the message was for her alone, but try as she might, she could not grasp the least glimmer of what the meaning had been.  What she did grasp was that this possible future was to be avoided at all cost.  Better by far, she knew, to lose her head to Salanda’s blade than to allow the events to occur that would lead her to that ending on that floor in the entry hall of the palace of the Baraduhne.

Chapter 5

Carraghlaoch

Carraghlaoch sat on a low but sheer-sided granite outcropping in a broad and fertile valley, with the dramatic snow-covered peaks of the West Wall looming nearby.  It appeared to Owen that the outer walls encircled an area several times that of the village of South Corner. The walls themselves were of huge close-fitted granite blocks, rising to at least thirty feet above the outcropping. The tops of some of the taller buildings were visible above the ramparts of the wall, and the central keep towered even higher with four turrets and a central dome.

The main gates to the city faced to the west, and were approached by a natural ramp that had been shaped to support a wide road.  A swift flowing river had carved a wide rock-walled canyon down the valley from the north and along the western side of the granite outcropping through a deep cut between the western approach ramp and the main gate. The cut narrowed to about twelve feet at this point, and the river boiled angrily through this gap some twenty feet below—the Blackrock Waters, named for the color of the wet granite cliffs that formed its channel, and referred to in legend as the last barrier before the city walls themselves.

Another long ramp had been built along the northern face of the outcropping, close under the fortress walls, to allow traffic from the eastern side of the river access to the main gate and to reach and pass across the bridge to the opposite side of the river gorge. An ancient portcullis could be lowered to block this approach to the fortress, and the bridge itself, though built of massive wooden beams and wide enough for four mounted knights to ride abreast, could be raised by great iron chains anchored in the bedrock of the outcropping to prevent approach from the west.  When McDonald’s Break had been open, the river gorge had made this site a place of vital strategic importance.  Originating as it did in the West Wall well to the north of the city, the river wended its way through a string of valleys as it worked its way far to the south, and provided a natural barrier between the Break and the fertile lands to the east.

Carraghlaoch had been built in ancient times to control this strategic narrows, and had long stood in defiance of invaders from the other side of the West Wall. On only three occasions over the centuries had the invaders occupied the land between the West Wall and the river in force and launched their desperate assaults against the fortress itself. On all three, the valiant defenders of Carraghlaoch had rebuffed their attacks, and eventually driven the enemy back through to the other side of the Break. Only once in its history had the outer walls to the fortress been passed, bringing warfare to the inner defenses, and that had been achieved through treachery and betrayal. Never had the walls fallen to force of arms.

The Old Wizard had told many tales of those times of war and heroism to Owen and Aaron while sitting on the floor before the fire in his dark and cluttered study; tales of the gorn, bred by sorcerers of old to wield a heavy war hammer with power far surpassing that of ordinary men, power to break the strongest shield wall; tales of powerful sorcerers weaving terrible storms of destruction and impenetrable shields of defense.  He told them of the valiant King Haladran and the fair Queen Eleanor who, fatally poisoned by a trusted counselor, had risen from their deathbed to lead their people in a desperate fight against a large company of gorn that had been treacherously allowed entry through a sally gate in the outer wall in the middle of a moonless night, had murdered their way to the gate house and were lowering the drawbridge to allow invasion of the fortress by a mighty horde waiting across the river.

At the prompting of the wizard’s voice, the boys had seen the valley floor across the gorge covered with the soldiers of the enemy forming up for attack behind great siege engines built to provide a platform for archers to shoot down at the defenders on the wall, and to bridge the chasm to bring an assault against the gates.  They heard the snap and flutter of battle pennants waiving in the icy winds blowing down from the glacial crags of the West Wall, and the scream of men and warhorses under a hail of steel-tipped arrows raining down out of the sun.  They smelled the charged air of great magics woven to rend and destroy, the smoke of burning buildings, tents and other structures of war, and the carnage of countless dead under the claws and talons of the carrion eaters.  He told them of deeds of great courage and appalling treachery, of bold heroes and heroines and vile villains.

Carraghlaoch had survived and at times prospered during those ages of conflict and peril, but it had not survived the peace that followed the closure of McDonald’s Break by the Old Wizard.  With the pass sealed and guarded by the magical denizen in the Wizard’s Moat, the valiant knights and mighty warriors had marched north to seek adventure in other wars along the West Wall where the passes remained open and where a man or woman of valor might still strive for acclaim. Most of the farriers, fletchers, armorers, squires, prostitutes, gamblers and hangers-on followed in their wake. The innkeepers, shopkeepers, stonemasons, carpenters and merchants that had supported the men at arms, and who had profited from their presence followed within a few months.

Some remained for a time to farm the fertile lands of the valley, but located as it was at the southern end of habitation along the West Wall, few traders visited this remote corner, and simple luxuries that could not be easily made locally became scarce. The more adventurous among the young men and women raised on these farms became restless in this forgotten corner of the world and left their homes to seek excitement and their fortunes elsewhere. Over the years, the shadow of the abandoned fortress seemed to weigh heavily upon the spirits of the remaining few, and they eventually migrated north leaving the valley and its once great castle to the ghosts and their memories of past glorious times.

Concealed at the edge of a forest of birch and scrub oak, not far from the river gorge, Owen gazed south across the valley at the old fortress perched upon its granite throne.  Here and there on the valley floor stood a small cluster of trees, a remnant of a stone chimney, or the wooden bones of a dwelling sticking out of a mound of wild raspberry bushes to mark the site where a farm had once been.  Traces of fallen structures, now overgrown with aspen and spruce, marked the former location of a town somewhat larger than South Corner that had squated at the base of the ramp leading up to the entrance to the walled city.

In the far distance to the south, Owen could just make out a watchtower similar to the one where they had slain the gorn.  It was located on a small rise near the east edge of the river gorge.  It seemed reasonable that the men of Carraghlaoch would have constructed such towers all along this side of that natural barrier in case their ancient enemy had tried to ford the wild river or to bridge the chasm somewhere along its wider lengths, no matter how impossible that appeared to be.

Several thin tendrils of gray smoke rose in the still air above the stone walls from an area inside the city near the main gate. It was late afternoon, and the sun was approaching the peaks of the West Wall that loomed nearby. A pair of red tailed hawks soared over the fields just across the river from the old fortress searching for rodents. Other than that, the trio could see no movement.

It had taken Owen and his companions most of the rest of the day to reach this vantage point. Traveling in a direct line, it would have probably taken half that, but they had had to be very cautious to avoid detection in this final leg of their quest. They had stayed to the trees as much as possible and moved with caution lest they be spotted from the castle or by roving enemy patrols. They had seen no patrols, perhaps indicating that the enemy had brought insufficient numbers, or that distrust among the enemy forces precluded allowing small units to operate on their own. Along the way, they had kept an eye on the trail between the watchtower and the old fortress when they could. They had not spotted any soldiers or gorn going back to check on their now dead comrades at the tower.

“It’s huge,” sighed Marian for the fourth time, echoing the thoughts of the other two. “No army that ever existed could have taken those walls if they were manned by a determined defense.”

“Probably not,” responded Jack, rousing himself from his own awed reverie, “and no bunch of farmers is likely to be able to take it back now that the gorn are in it, either.  Unless there is an unguarded entrance on the other side that we cannot see from here, the only way in would be up that ramp that leads to the main gate. I’d hate to have to make that climb while a party of bowmen looked down at me from the walls above. For that matter, a half-dozen small girls with a basket of rocks could make it bloody uncomfortable.

“Do you figure that smoke indicates that our friends are being held in the fortress?”

“I think it’s likely,” Owen answered. “I don’t see anybody moving on the other side of the gorge, and if you look closely towards the cleft that marks McDonald’s Break you can just see a thin black line that seems to stick up above the trees. I’m pretty sure that is the bridge over the Wizard’s Moat. I’ve been watching it off and on since we got here, and I haven’t seen anybody on it. I don’t think that it’s possible that they could have taken everybody over it before we got here. So, either they are in those trees just this side of the Moat, or they’re in the castle. If I was guarding a bunch of hostages, I’d choose the castle, where I could more easily keep them penned in.”

“So how do you figure we can get them out?” Marian asked. To which Jack just snorted. “I’m serious. We can’t just leave them there.”

“I’m afraid Jack is right. It’s going to take a lot more than the three of us to free anyone from that place. I counted about twenty soldiers and maybe forty gorn the night before last. They’re probably going to have at least ten or so on guard all the time. It wouldn’t be like the watchtower, where we could sneak up on two of them while they slept and only have to deal with one in a real fight. It’s going to take a lot of luck and all of the men of the parish to even have a chance at winning this battle.”

“Well, we’ve followed them about as far as we can, and thanks to your nightly sorties we know something about their strength,” said Jack. “It’ll get dark fast once the sun goes behind the Wall. I vote for heading back in the morning to make our report and decide what to do next.”

“I agree. There’s not much else we can do. Even if they decided to move everybody across the river, we couldn’t follow. The chances of the three of us making it up that ramp and over the drawbridge without being spotted are about zero.”

“I still think that I could sneak in there once it gets dark enough,” Marian complained.

“Not likely. By all the stories, the gorn see much better than you do in the dark. It’s likely they’ll be standing the night watch. You’d never make it to the gate. Let’s see to the horses and get something to eat.”