“How far is Eelan?”
“Mayhap twenty milles, could be a shade more.”
“Do people travel here from farther north?”
“In the summer, they do. Not now, most years.”
Quaeryt asked more questions, but it was clear that the man had told him what he knew. And others around the square couldn’t add much.
“We might as well push on,” he decided. And we’ll likely need imaging in more than a few places.
Less than two milles north of Faantyl, the outriders came hurrying back to Quaeryt and Zhelan.
“Sirs…”
“There’s an impassable swampy stretch of road?” asked Quaeryt.
“Pretty much, sir.”
“What does the road look like beyond the swampy place?” asked Quaeryt.
“Can’t tell, sir.”
“Is there a track that leads around it?”
“There’s a narrow path, but Cloryt’s mount’s foreleg sunk so deep we had to use ropes to pull him clear.”
“We’ll have to see what the imagers can do, then.” Quaeryt turned in the saddle. “Imager undercaptains! Forward!” Then he looked at Vaelora. “The road repairs begin. I hope we don’t have to rebuild it all the way to Eelan.”
“If you do, that will make life better for the people.”
“And take days…” he replied dryly, turning to Zhelan and saying, “Have the men take a break, and pass the word back to Calkoran and Khaern. Water the mounts, and then move ahead to join us. But take your time.”
With the four imager undercaptains and Elsior, Quaeryt rode forward a good quarter mille along the section of the road that rose very gradually, perhaps five yards over the distance. He reined up where the outriders waited on the gentle crest just south of an area that looked like a gigantic mud puddle, stretching several hundred yards to the north and east and some thirty to the west. His first inclination was to have one of the imagers just remove the sloppy mess, but he saw that the road was actually in a depression with higher ground to each side, and that ground was a good two yards higher. Still, that gave him an idea, and he guided his mount toward the river, where he looked over the higher ground between the muddy mess and the slope down to the Phraan. Then he rode back.
“Horan … do you see where that bare bush is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think you could image out a channel two yards wide from the road through the higher ground?”
“So that the slop will flow toward the river?”
“That’s the idea. Even if it doesn’t, that will allow drainage in the future so that this mess doesn’t happen again.”
Horan concentrated, and in instants there was a channel from the west side of where the road might once have been through the higher ground to the slope leading down to the river, a distance of about fifty yards.
“There you are, sir.” Horan blotted his forehead.
“Let’s wait and see how much drains away.”
While the water on top of the mud slowly flowed through the channel, after a quint had passed it was clear that the mud below the surface water wasn’t moving. Not anytime soon, Quaeryt realized.
“Lhandor, image away a few yards of the mud, starting there.” Quaeryt pointed several yards north of the slightly higher and drier ground where he had reined up.
“Yes, sir.”
After just a few efforts by Lhandor and Khalis, and even a smaller amount being removed by Elsior, Quaeryt called a halt when he saw, at the bottom of the excavated area, the remnant of what appeared to be a stone wall.
“Take away a bit to the north,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.” Khalis did so, revealing more mortared stone.
With the additional removal, Quaeryt could see that at some time in the past, someone had built a stone causeway through the swampy ground, and that the causeway had included two culverts to drain water away.
In the end, some two glasses later, a stone roadway, with three arched culverts beneath and smaller channels feeding into the larger one that Horan had created, stretched almost four hundred yards through what had been a swampy depression.
Once the last traces of frost from the imaging had faded, they resumed their journey.
“If the people here had just maintained what was built here in the first place, they wouldn’t have had that problem,” observed Vaelora.
“The local smallholders don’t have the ability to do that, not without neglecting their own lands. There aren’t any High Holders near, and the factors in Faantyl and Eelan don’t want to spend the silvers or golds because they don’t see any immediate coins from repairing the road. That’s the problem with leaving everything in the hands of the factors. If it doesn’t benefit them directly and immediately, most of them won’t do things that help others, especially here in Bovaria, it appears.”
Two milles north of the swampy area and the newly rebuilt causeway, Vaelora suddenly pointed to a low rise on which there were several scattered stone and brick walls. The brick was, once more, pale yellow. “Over there, on the hillside.”
Just ahead, also on the left, was a double line of trees, although there were many gaps in the trees that had once flanked a drive leading to the buildings.
“Most likely, the former High Holder who once lived there built the causeway,” suggested Quaeryt.
“This isn’t that narrow a road. Or it wasn’t. Look at how wide the shoulders are.”
Quaeryt had noticed that earlier. “You’re thinking that this was once the main way from Varian to Daaren before the Great Canal was built?”
“It was a more important road then.”
“That makes sense. The route is shorter.” It also proved to Quaeryt how much Kharst and his sire had neglected the roads of Bovaria.
For the rest of the morning and the first three glasses of the afternoon, the road remained passable, although in two cases, Quaeryt had the imagers replace small timber bridges with stone spans, but those were across small creeks.
Just after fourth glass, up ahead, he saw an oblong stone, upright, but half buried in turf that threatened to engulf it. When they rode closer, he could see that the millestone held letters carved into the stone that time and weather had softened until they were barely readable: EELAN-4 M.
“Have you ever heard or read of the place?” asked Vaelora.
“Except as a name on a map? No.”
They rode another two milles. Then the road curved away from the river, running due east for a good half mille before turning back north again. Quaeryt also noticed that the Phraan River itself had bent more to the west, and he wondered why the road hadn’t at least gone straight. After another half mille, he saw why. Off the road to the left was a high holding, not a huge one, but definitely a high holding with a large residence constructed out of pale yellow brick and gray stone situated on a low rise that presumably overlooked the river, although Quaeryt couldn’t see the river from the road. Ahead was a set of gates, simple black iron anchored in two large yellow brick and gray stone pillars, with a low pale yellow brick wall running some fifty yards back from the gates on each side.
As they rode past, Quaeryt saw no indication of who the High Holder might be, although the well-kept grounds and thin trails of smoke from more than a few chimneys indicated that the holding was definitely in use.
“I would have thought,” ventured Vaelora, “that the High Holder might have had some interest in better roads.”
“His holding is on the river, and it’s deep enough, barely, for travel and probably for small boats to bring goods down from Eluthyn. The last thing he’d have wanted is good roads for Kharst’s forces to be able to reach him easily.”
“So they all let the roads deteriorate to make it harder for Kharst to reach them?”
“Given what you know about him, wouldn’t you?”
Vaelora just shook her head.
“That brings up one other thing that has bothered me, on and off,” Quaeryt ventured.
“Which is, dearest?”
“Imagers. There were always rumors that Kharst had imagers. We never encountered any. No one has mentioned them, either.”