There had been a town on those hills for centuries but it had long been a sleepy place far upriver from the thriving city now known as Souterm, a place to where the products of rural farms were gathered to ship downstream. With the Codification of Doon forty years ago and the extension of the Imperial Post Road the town was now a booming place, with new shops and homes springing up on the hills so swiftly that several proposed sites for city walls had been consecutively overrun. The wall was not a priority for despite the proximity of the Vod Wilds, Magdetchoi raids here were few as the river cut through the hills in a sharp, deep channel that was almost a canyon.
The spot where the Imperial authorities had allowed the Shugak to erect a ferry dock and a cluster of hide tents in which they did the business of selling passes and licenses was below the hills and to the south. Nesha-tari’s band did not have to enter Red Galdeez at all, much to their leader’s relief. At her direction Zebulon Baj Nif handled the transaction for passes with the hulking hobgoblins, while Phoarty and Amatesu went ahead into town only to buy provisions for what would be around two additional weeks on the rough Shugak road.
There were no swamps nor bayous in this region of the Vod Wilds, only the hills across which hobgoblins had hacked out a trace road through the wilderness. The trace was so bad that even the baggage cart was problematic, for the obstinate straight-line route dropped and climbed hills without an awful lot of forethought. The group was obliged to spread the baggage in heavy packs among them. Zeb got the worst of it as the Minauan now carried his crossbow, a massive weapon with a heavy hand crank for reloading. The bolts it shot were the size of long tent stakes, making even the ammunition a burden.
Despite the ruggedness of their way the group made decent time as Nesha-tari set a brisk place, continuing to march out in front. When they camped at night she went well out into the thick forests at the base of the hills to sleep on her own, typically high in a tree. Shugak hobgoblins selling water for wine prices along the way warned against straying from the path, but not even Uriako Shikashe made much of a fuss when she went out by herself. The samurai seemed to recognize that in her present state Nesha-tari Hrilamae was likely the most dangerous thing in the darkness of the Wilds.
Zeb and Phin made the journey mostly in silence for even with Nesha-tari keeping her distance, and knowing what they now did about her, both could still feel the tug of her presence. They tried to look at their feet while walking, but several times one or the other took a spill as their gaze drifted up and settled dreamily on the flitting beige figure far ahead on the rough trace. The other would help the fallen one up, and the two would exchange a long look and shake their heads.
Phin had worries about Camp Town. Once there he was set to separate from the rest of the group, and to leave Nesha-tari. Thinking about it made his palms clammy, and his breathing quickened until he felt lightheaded. Abverwar had given the wizard a disciplined mind, but the woman (if that was the right word) had invaded it. Phin’s morning meditations were becoming ever longer by the day, for it was an effort for him to muster the concentration necessary to memorize his spells. Only the hard, physical effort of the march on the Shugak trace gave Phin any relief, for he collapsed so exhausted at the end of each day that his sleep was as deep as the dead. So deep that not even the dreams roused him from it, though there were a lot of dreams. They were all about the same thing.
Phin was starting to think he might have to ask Amatesu to club him unconscious again before he would be able to let Nesha-tari walk out of his life.
*
After nine days the trace road left the Red Hills, or rather the hills sank into marshy ground while the trace continued straight across it. This was only possible because suddenly, for miles, a wide causeway ran above the fens to either side, lying on a true line due east. The causeway was surely not the work of the hobgoblins for in places the grass growing over it had been so trampled by adventurers over the last months that the dirt had given way, revealing a stone road made up of many different types of rocks all fitted together as smoothly as the finest city street. None who noticed it in passing thought it could have been the work of anyone other than the ancient Ettaceans, the Builders of Vod’Adia toward which the road led.
A day later the causeway ended at a new line of hills, and only the rude trace road marked the route again. This range in the midst of the Wilds was if anything worse than the Red Hills, with steeper sides and sharper peaks giving little purchase for plants and thus a greater air of desolation. For more long days the path rose and fell though in at least three places there were signs that a higher road had once existed here, for a rubble of ingeniously cut stones that had once been the supports of bridges cluttered the bottoms of deep gulches through which the trace ran.
After thirteen days all told, bringing the date to the 25th of Ninth Month, the trace mounted the side of a ridge at a ludicrous angle, not quite necessitating the use of hands to get up it but not shy of that by many degrees. Zeb’s lungs were heaving by the time he reached the top, the last to do so, and he splayed on the ground next to Phin who was already flat on his back before a dense line of tall pines.
“Gods, this sucks,” Zeb gasped.
“I hate the Ettaceans,” Phin said at the cloudy sky above. It looked like rain was not far off.
Amatesu emerged from the tree line and frowned at the two prone men. Zeb looked up at her accusingly.
“You’re not even breathing hard, are you?”
“Gentlemen,” Amatesu said, actually without sarcasm. “We are here.”
Despite their exhaustion, and everything else, Zeb and Phin got back to their feet. They followed Amatesu through the trees packed together so tightly it almost seemed like evening down among them, until finally stepping back out into daylight shining on a different world.
They stood on the western edge of a deep valley ringed by walls of black stone steep as cliffs. They were closer to the northern end and down on the valley floor far below them was a town of ramshackle wood and stone, mud streets shining wetly and black smoke from innumerable fires drifting up to mingle with skirls of fog drifting about below them like clouds beneath their feet.
“ That is fabled Vod’Adia?” Phin sputtered.
“I think that is Camp Town,” Zeb said, and he pointed to the south.
Phin swung his gaze over the grassy floor of the middle valley and noticed that the southern half was not just obscured by thicker fog, as he had thought at a glance. The fog was not just a bank, but rather a solid, stationary mass filling the valley to its walls and stretching from the floor to a level with the top. The mass was a dark gray on the bottom that became lighter as it rose, and while whitish skirls were pulled off the top by a breeze the whole never lost in size, almost as though more fog was constantly being generated from the ground.
As Phin stared he saw that the thick mass was still slightly permeable quite a ways down, and his eyes tried to make peace with the fact that the whole was slowly turning, whirling, revolving, in various directions contrary to the wind. He began to perceive shapes beyond the veil. There were tall, spindly towers and heaping masses of black fortifications and citadels. Phin could only make out their highest points as the ground level was wholly lost in the gray darkness.