Of the begging brother and his followers, he thought no more.
Chapter 32
The bridge crossed the Malistor, running wide, deep, and a sickly reddish brown that matched the sky for ugliness. All the world seemed the hue of dried blood. The constant veil of smoke, the dire aspect of the landscape, and the unnatural solitude of their surroundings left Kian deeply troubled.
The Kaliayth was always absent plentiful life, but this near Ammathor there should have been merchant trains moving to and from the king’s city, along with peddlers and crofters bringing their wares to the city’s bazaars. Neither did barges nor fat-bellied trade ships ply the river’s waters. Even with such hard times, there should have been some activity. Instead, it was as if the entire living world had perished.
Pushing aside his foreboding, Kian eyed the wide expanse of land known as the Pass of Trebuldar. The pass rose and narrowed toward the Two Brothers, twin mountains now seen only faintly through a hazy shroud. In all that gloomy redness, the few trees and scrub scattered amongst wind-worn boulders looked a startling, sickly green. He imagined Varis somewhere ahead, looking back at him with his goggling white eyes.
“Varis will expect us to come this way,” Kian said.
“Doubtless he will have sentries posted on every road leading into the city,” Azuri agreed.
Kian glanced at his companions for any suggestions.
Hazad shrugged, then took a sip from his depleted skin of jagdah.
Ellonlef offered, “There is the trade road that passes through the fishing village of Teeko to the south, and leads into the Chalice.”
Kian shook his head. “Varis will have that road watched, like all the others.”
“Perhaps,” Ellonlef said, “but he cannot hope to put guards on all the smuggler trails that branch off the main road. Even if he has, their numbers will certainly be thin enough for us to sneak by-there are simply too many paths to watch with any effectiveness.”
Kian appraised her. “What would you, a Sister of Najihar, know of smuggler trails?”
“To know a kingdom’s strengths, you must also know that kingdom’s weaknesses,” Ellonlef countered. “If we chose to enter the Chalice in order to reach Ammathor, I also know someone who can help.”
“You sisters really are spies,” Hazad said in appreciation.
Ellonlef offered a tight smile.
“Very well,” Kian said, bowing in the saddle. “We put our care into your hands.”
Ellonlef nodded graciously, and led the party south along a rutted wagon track following sweeping river bends.
As the day lengthened, gusty winds out of the north and west picked up. Instead of warming, the day grew colder. The sun climbed, giving off a thin ruddy light, but offering no hope of warmth. Miles passed and the wind increased, sending streamers of grit rushing low over the ground with a steady hissing sound. In a bid to stave off the choking dust, everyone wrapped swatches of cloth torn from a tunic around their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.
Sometime around midday, a loud and erratic banging drew their attention to a sturdy mud brick home set far off the track. Kian surveyed the abandoned crofter’s home through squinted eyes, noting a shutter had come unbolted and was slapping against the wall. Much longer and the shutter would splinter, or the wind would rip it off its hinges. He thought nothing of it until they passed a second crofter’s house.
Here, the front door creaked open, then slammed shut, creaked, slammed. Kian reined in with a frown. It took a moment for him to realize the problem was not in what he saw, but rather what he did not. Like the last croft, this one had been abandoned some time gone. Summer-yellowed weeds grew in place of crops; the doors to low-roofed barns that normally sheltered goats and sheep, pigs and chickens, oxen and burros, stood empty. In distress, he imagined that people had sought each other out, congregating for safety and solace. Teeko, he considered, might well be a bustling town.
The trio rode on, fighting to remain on the wagon track in the face of a building sandstorm. The scant daylight weakened as the sun sank in the west, and every croft they passed was in worse condition than the first two.
When they came to another ancient stone bridge, they carefully crossed over. The shaking of the world had damaged the structure, though someone had spanned the gaps with timbers. On the eastern shore, Kian and the others trotted their mounts up and over a steep embankment cut by millennia of spring floods. Expecting a village lighted by lamps and candles, he instead found a scene of destruction that defied comprehension.
Teeko had originally been a smallish keep with four large towers at the cardinal points and high, crenulated walls of sandstone. Over the centuries, Teeko had become more of a village than an outpost, surrounded by a haphazard collection of shops, taverns, and brothels that catered to passing caravans and the crews of trade ships. Teeko’s keep had become an inn. As the village lay not far from Ammathor, the services they provided were not much needed, so even in the best of times, Teeko oozed an air of dilapidation.
No one would ever again worry over that.
Where the outpost had once stood now a gaping, water-filled hole remained, from which deep fissures radiated outward. What had survived being dragged down into the earth had been reduced to low piles of rubble, flattened as if an errant giant had stomped through the village. Unlike the abandoned crofts they had passed earlier, here there were people, but time, the arid climate, and carrion eaters had rendered the corpses into skeletons covered in patches of leathery hide and wind-tugged hair.
The increasing winds, colder than ever, dissuaded talking, so they continued, now following Aradan’s southern trade road, each lost in their own thoughts. For Kian, there were no words to express what he felt after seeing what had become of Teeko. To be sure, remorse for so many lost innocents distressed him, but more, he found himself wondering how many other towns and villages and cities had suffered the same fate. His heart told him that in the coming months those who were still alive would suffer far more than those who had died quickly. Winter, seemingly already crouching in wait, despite that it should be months off, would destroy crops waiting in vain for harvesters to collect them. With hunger would come sickness, perhaps even plagues. To be sure, there would be violence. If things were as bad as they seemed on the surface, it could well be that the following spring would see Aradan torn asunder by desperation-and by those who exploited such desperation.
The road climbed steadily, winding through weathered stone and pillars of red rock made all the darker by the setting sun. Of sentries or other watchers, they saw no sign. With the southern reaches of the Chalice still some ten leagues away, the absence of observers did not surprise Kian.
In the lee of a rock, he halted long enough to suggest that they ride until they could find a suitable place to shelter from the wind, and then camp for the night. No one refuted him, and they rode on, bowed in their saddles, tired and hungry.
As they crested a rise of land that overlooked the River Malistor and the Kaliayth beyond, Kian jerked his reins with a shocked curse. When the others glanced at him, he merely pointed west. Far off, a great curve of dark smoke was piling up, the winds pressing it east against the Ulkions. Before that roiling bulwark, all was as hazed and grim as ever, but behind that arc the sky was a startling indigo sprinkled with the evening’s first stars.
“Look!” Hazad breathed.
All eyes gazed at the distant opening in the sky, uncertain what should concern the big man. After many long moments, Kian felt an inexplicable unease stealing over him.