“Aye.” He looked behind them, maybe at Roviarath’s distant Lighthouse Tower, the safe city world he’d left – maybe at the great shadow of the Kartiah Mountains growing over the empty plain – Amethea couldn’t tell. “And off the trade-roads.”
“Nervous?” She smiled.
He shrugged. “Just tales.” Running his hands through his shock of orange hair, he shook the dust out of it. “My cousin Redlock used to scare us kids when we were knee-biters. How the Kartiah are haunted and some such... Got any more water?”
“Told you not to guzzle all yours.” Leaning over in the high-backed saddle, Amethea passed him her waterskin. “You said yourself, we’re off the trade-roads, no one comes out here – even assuming we’re lucky with the taer, it’ll be late tomorrow before we get back to the river and any hint of civilisation.”
Feren took a careful swallow of lukewarm water and gave her a cheeky, sunburned grin. “You wouldn’t fail me. Not after everything.”
He had a point.
Taer was dusk blooming, found in only three places across the Grasslands and sought for a pollen that knit bones like hide glue. Crossing the open plainland herself was a huge undertaking – taking her ’prentice on his final test was as much an assessment for her as it was for him. “Go with caution,” Vilsara had said, “and return with wisdom.”
All very well for Vilsara, far to the north-west in Xenok’s hospice... Amethea and Feren were two days out of the Great Fayre at Roviarath, nearly a full day from any kind of safety. The vast emptiness of the open plainland was powerful, unknown, dangerous. Only the Deep Patrols came off the trade-roads – and they were an odd lot, somehow changed by the desolation.
“...Days since we’ve seen a decent tavern.” Feren was muttering under his breath. He suddenly interrupted himself with a pleased grin. “Unless The Wanderer comes out here.”
“The Wanderer?” Amethea chuckled. “Wasn’t it in Xenok? You think it’s following us?”
“I wish it was.” Feren’s grin broadened.
The teacher shook her head.
“We see it out here, I’ll eat my saddle and ride home bareback.”
“Really? Now, who told me the Gods had a sense of humour...?”
“You want me to finalise your ’prenticeship?” Checking about her, Amethea swung one leg over the chearl’s spike-maned neck and slid, with a groan, to the ground. The grasses reached past her knees and she leaned forwards to pound stiff thighs with her fists, making dust and pollen fly. Her chearl turned and blew noisily on her breeches. Absently, she scratched his great head.
“Are they? Haunted, I mean?” Feren was back to watching the distant mountains.
“You are nervous.” Amethea, too, turned westwards – the setting sun, the rising shadow. “It’s superstition, that’s all – that and your cousin pulling your strings. The Kartiah are just mountains – people live there.”
“People.” Feren’s scepticism was typical Grasslander wariness. “They’re slavers.”
“They’re craftsmen, Feren, metalworkers, part of the trade cycle. ‘People.’” Her voice held an edge. “Neither the Kartiah nor the Monument are saga-borne myths.”
Feren, too, slid from his saddle. “So why don’t they know what it was for? Or what destroyed it?”
“The Monument?” The chearl was slope-backed and carried her panniers on his withers. Amethea reached into one of them for a handful of dried fruit. “You want to know if all that hairy-scary ‘Souls of the Elements’ stuff has its feet in the truth? Only the Gods know that. It was probably just destroyed by the Count of Time.”
“No one knows.” He accepted a piece of fruit.
“No one cares,” Amethea told him. “Vilsara says we used to keep records, once – going back to Xenok’s builders. But they’re rotted, almost mush. Gods know what the real tale was.”
“So... the mountains could be haunted – we’ve just forgotten?”
Laughing, she threw fruit at him.
“‘Haunted’! You’ve been listening to those idiots in the market. Come on, if the shadow’s bothering you that much we’ll stay ahead of it... that way the mountains’ twisted spirit can’t get us and turn us into something icky.” Swearing under her breath at stiffened muscles, she swung herself back into her saddle, settled against the back. “Besides, if we don’t catch the taer right the pollen’ll be all gone.”
“Aye.” Feren returned her waterskin and mounted the broad back of his chearl.
Soon, the two creatures were tirelessly running, broad hooves thrubbing on the baked soil, grasses dancing about their thick, muscled legs. They were heavier than horses, not as swift, but stronger over distance and steadier of nerve. Tales told that their ancestors had been crafted by some kind of alchemy; in the high days of Tusien, they rumoured, such crafting had been familiar. Amethea had sometimes wondered if those records were among the mouldering piles in Xenok’s hospice.
Now, though, chearl were bred normally, and so common that people had long since forgotten the tale of their origin.
Before them, their shadows lengthened; behind them, a greater shadow rose. As the sun sighed into the mountains, the creatures ran tireless, smooth gaited and placid in obedience. They had come a long way – following the ribbon-towns and trade-roads from the sprawled city of Xenok to the forested Irahlau, along the edges of the Rhamiriae to the huge Fayre at Roviarath. Following the growing swell of the Great Cemothen River, they had at last turned across the open plain – off the safety of the road to a place now known only to Deep Patrol beer-tales and reckless, almost-senior apothecaries.
Apothecaries like Amethea, wondering what in the world she thought she was doing, bringing her ’prentice this far from home.
She stole a sideways glance at Feren as the light faded. He was sitting upright, refusing to rest against the high back of the saddle – a position that strained his legs, as his feet were forwards in their stirrups. He was young, his soft beard new and a shade lighter than his shock of hair. Feren was freckled and a little wild-eyed. He’d given the chearl its head and his hand strayed often to the javelins slung down the side of his saddle. His cousin Redlock was famous – perhaps infamous – across half the world, a man of fearsome reputation who had abandoned his land, lady and daughter to become a warrior without peer. Was Feren a fighter? As a distant yammering made the ’prentice jump, Amethea chuckled. Feren was hardly warrior material, but road-pirates stayed where the pickings were rich – and the chearl were big enough to deter most predators.
Like the bretir, the wide-winged flyers of messages, and the couriers’ companionable, guardian nartuk, now extinct, the chearl had been crafted with flawless efficiency.
If the tales were even true.
Slowly, the twilight caught them, rose around them. Above them, the moons were in perfect halves, they lit the plains to a vast, eerie emptiness where the ghosts of the Kartiah gibbered under every thought. The air grew chill and the grasses swished as the chearl ran on.
“Feren.” Amethea reined her beast and pointed. “There.”
He paused beside her. For a moment, they both stared in silence.
Before them, the ground swelled into a low hill. Against the deepening blue of the sky, the massive, tumbled stones glimmered faintly with their own light, giving the Monument a peculiar, skin-crawling glow. Amethea could make out the heavy, black ridge of the surrounding bank – soil upon which no grass grew.
Compelled to an awed silence, they rode slowly upwards.
Surrounding the bank, a huge, empty ditch held only darkness. No creatures lived here. Yet the fallen stones themselves still towered over bank, beasts and riders and commanded breathlessness and wonder.
His voice barely a whisper, Feren said, “It sings.”