The Elfstream became their road, the river winding from the foothills of the easternmost reaches of the curving spur of the Kharolis Mountains up across the northern border of the kingdom where a branch became the Dark-water River, the waters spilling to Darken Wood. Another, mightier trunk became the swift White-Rage and defined the borders between a free land and a captive kingdom. Kerian wanted to go there, all the way north, and breathe the air of a Free Realm. Jeratt had no objection* and faithful Ander would have followed anywhere. They found that they must keep to the deeper forest not only to hunt but to keep out of the sight of regular Knightly patrols.
“Ain’t like in the home-wood,” Jeratt said, “There they didn’t like to come in too far. Here-” He spat. “Ain’t like in the home-wood.”
Kerian thought of that word, “home-wood,” and she wondered whether Jeratt was ready to return to the eastern part of the forest, hack the falls and his friends. She didn’t ask him, not then, for if he was feeling ready, she was not She reveled in the new paths, in encountering places she’d never seen nor even imagined. The foothills of the KharoKs Mountains lay snug between the arms of the rising hills. Here they occasionally encountered elves who made Kerian wonder why her brother considered the Qualinesti effete. Farmers in their narrow dales, these were folk who had never traveled so far as the capital for a festival day, who lived their lives by clock of the sun and the calendar of the seasons. They were not wealthy, unless in the good rich soil they farmed.
“Aye, and in peace,” said one, a young farm wife whose husband had come across the travelers at a narrow stream at the edge of the wood and invited them to share the evening meal.
Her husband, Felan, eyed Kerian’s tattoos, the weathered faces and rough dress of all three. “Knights all over the place, but we know how to recognize them. Meantime-” he slid a basket of bread and rolls across the table to Ander as his pretty wife refilled their mugs with beer “-we have a tradition of hospitality in these dales, and no Knight’s going to break that.”
“Do they trouble you much?” Kerian asked She plucked a roll from the breadbasket, broke it open, and covered it in both honey and butter.
The elf shrugged. “We never forget they’re there, them and their beast-men, but they don’t bother us much. We’re not worth the trouble.”
Kerian raised a skeptical eyebrow, for this seemed like a wealthy enough farmstead, and laughed. Felan motioned for her to rise and follow him. Curious, she did. He opened the door to the fading light of day and stepped into his dooryard.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “This farm lies in a very narrow dale, and the way in-as you saw-is hard.” He pointed behind the house to the stony hills rising up on all side. “The way otit is harder still. We’re not easy pickings. It’s like that all over these dales.”
The sky hung in deepening darkness over the farmhouse. The sounds of night creatures drifted from field and forest. Kerian heard an owl, and the silvery song of the stream at the edge of the newly planted cornfield.
“Will you stay the night?” he asked. “You and your companions?”
They were good folk, these farmers. Kerian found herself sitting up late into the night talking, listening to their stories of farm life, their hopes for the newly planted crop. The tales turned to rumors heard about the Knights and how they had, indeed, set up outposts in the larger towns. A little farther east, “between here and poor Qualinost,” no one passed on the roads without first having to beg a Knight’s grace. “Now you never heard about that kind of thing here in this part of the kingdom. Not till lately,” Felan said.
According to him, restrictions in the capital had grown tighter since autumn. Kerian thought of Gil, of the Queen Mother, and wondered whether this meant their cherished plans for a treaty between elves, humans, and dwarves had fallen to ruin.
Moving north along the foothills, keeping far from the chance of running into Knights or draconians, Kerian and her companions found that most farmers in the dales were of the same mind as the farmer and his wife. They were genuinely pleased to welcome travelers, especially hunters who arrived with a brace of quail at the belt or a string of fat fish to offer to the evening meal. These folk were generous with food and fire and news.
Kerian learned that the foothills farther north weren’t so softly green as those in the south, and the soil was stony and stingy, not the kind a farmer likes. She was warned that she wouldn’t find much hospitality from the mountain outlaws. From the sound of them, these were not the type of men and women she’d encountered near Quali-nost. These belonged to no king, to no land, and had lived unchecked for generations uncounted.
“Keep away from them,” warned Bayel, a farmer’s young son. “They have no interest in anything but what they can take from you, starting with your life.”
“Do they trouble the Knights much?”
He shrugged. “They mostly run on the west side of the mountains and a little down into the forest there. The Knights don’t go that far, not yet. They’re set up in the towns east of the spur. For now.”
Bayel sounded like a keen-thinker, like one who knew how to listen and see how things might go. Kerian asked if he’d heard anything about Lord Thagol himself.
The farmer shrugged. “He’s been glimpsed here and there. I’ve never seen him, but I heard from someone in a tavern that he looks like a ghost, pale and dark-eyed. You get the feeling of ghosts, so my friend said. It’s all cold around him.”
Jeratt snorted. “Aye, well, that’d be him. Face like a fire-scar, thinkin’ all the time about killing. Out east, I saw him more than once, saw him with his Knights. He’s a Skull Knight, and them’s the worst They say he can get right into an enemy’s head and next thing you know you’re having nightmares you never had before. I don’t know about that, but Kerian’ll tell you, he’s the one ordered the killing of elves-Kagonesti and Qualinesti-in the eastern part of the kingdom. Bastard’s pikin’ heads on the bridge in Qualinost”
“Draconians are helping ‘em.” Bayel took a long breath and let it out again. In the room beyond the hearth-room the voices of his parents murmured. “One killed my cousin,” he said low. “Killed him for traveling without a permit He was leaving his own farm, out by Iindalenost, heading down the road to visit a kinsman. Who thought you’d need permission for that, eh?” The boy’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Not me, and I don’t see how that’s right”
Silence drifted into the room. The farmer poked his fire again. He leaned toward Kerian from out of the shadows, his face bright in the fading light. “Stay with us,” he said, urging and eager. He looked past her to Ander and Jeratt “All of you, of course.”
Ander moved restlessly. Jeratt saw that and elbowed him still.
“We’re not staying,” Kerian said gently. “We have to keep moving.”
The young man’s eyes lighted with interest. “I’d like to be doing that myself,” he said. He looked right and left, as though someone might be concealed in the deepening shadows of the falling hearth fire. “I’d like to pay back one of them Knights. Or a draconian.”
It should have been all that was said, that night before the dying fire, but Kerian said one thing more: “Do others feel the way you do?”
“Plenty. Lots of talk goes on in the kitchens of farmhouses, but not much gets done.”