Then he swung up into the saddle, and they moved quietly towards the bottom of the pass. No stirring from the inns, and Gawain frowned when he realised he should hear horses from the corrals. But they were empty. He shrugged.
But at the Pass, he paused by the empty guardhouses. There should be a contingent of Raheen border guards and their Callodon counterparts here, challenging him at the trestle barricades…
There were none. With a rising sense of trepidation and a dry mouth, he stared about him as Gwyn weaved through the trestles, and began the ascent. She was sure-footed, even in the gloom, but seemed to pick her way cautiously, almost hesitantly. Gawain urged her on with a quiet word for the first time in his memory.
It must be a joke, he thought. A practical jest, dreamed up by Kevyn…on the day of Gawain's return, we'll all pretend not to notice…We'll all hide and when he gets to the top…
By the time they were two thirds of the way up, the sky to the east was blooming a ruddy orange, as if a distant conflagration was engulfing the Sea of Hope. Gwyn's ears pricked this way and that, as if she were straining to hear some expected call. She probably was, for there would be herds of Raheen horses atop the plateau. Summer was often the season when most steeds chose their mounts.
With every step Gwyn took, it seemed, the sky lightened. Gawain knew he must be patient, and allow the horse to set her own pace. Not for nothing had Raheen remained unconquered in centuries without the use of dark magic. The Pass was barely wide enough for two horses to cross each other safely.
Nearing the crest was a sharp bend, and Gawain paused as the first rays of sunshine blazed over the horizon like an immense broadsword sweeping the land. He turned his face to them, offered a brief remembrance to The Fallen, and then allowed Gwyn to follow the bend in the track and begin the last gentle ascent to the top of the plateau.
Something, Gawain knew, was very wrong. This last slope ran broad and gently, and almost arrow-straight to the top of the plateau. Gwyn stepped out, breaking into a trot briefly, but then slowing again, her own confusion mingling with her rider's. When they had left Raheen a year and a day ago, there had been a large shed at the top of the track wherein, by agreement between Raheen and Callodon, all goods and travellers in and out were recorded and examined by the border guards.
The shed was not there. It had stood there for longer than Gawain could remember, painted bright red and gold on one side and black and gold, Callodon's colours, on the other. Now it was gone.
Gawain's heart beat louder in his chest. A stiff salt breeze whipped in from the Sea of Hope that lay sparking in the distance, and Gawain thought he saw a fine white mist flurrying at the top of the track. Still Gwyn maintained her slow advance, her gaze swinging this way and that.
Then Gawain urged her forward, and in a sudden bursting gallop, they rushed to the top of the Downland Pass, and came to an abrupt halt.
Gawain could not believe his eyes. This was a dream, he thought, some cruel nightmare from which he'd wake at any moment, and find himself still camped at the foot of the plateau…
But it was no dream, and as Gwyn let out a short whinny of confusion and bobbed her head, Gawain took a single choking breath, and eased her forward onto Raheen's hallowed soil.
But there was no soil. There was nothing. For as far as the eye could see, nothing but a fine white ash covering the land like the dust of ages in some derelict building.
There should be a copse of tall silvertrees half a mile dead ahead. There was nothing. Just a relentless expanse of ash. There should be bustling inns and a guardhouse, trading posts and warehouses all around him. Nothing. Ash.
Gwyn advanced slowly again, her head swinging this way and that just as Gawain's did, tiny clouds of white dust enveloping her hooves as she walked. The bustling market town of Downland had gone, completely and utterly, and in its place, a layer of ashes.
Contours in the land were recognisable, but alien. The cobbled road that led from Downland, south-west through villages and farmland all the way to Raheen castletown, was clearly visible as a shallow depression in the stark white blanket before him. Even the ruts in the track, worn by the wagon-wheels of centuries, were plain to see.
But all around…all around, where there should be rolling green and verdant lands, hamlets and villages, travellers and traders, trees and bushes and houses, all around, nothing. But ashes.
Gawain's heart hammered, his eyes fogged with tears, and abject terror clutched his innards like an iron fist. Gwyn let out a long, shrill whinny, and then fell silent, head and ears scanning as if expecting a reply.
"On Gwyn, on!” Gawain cried, and the horse launched into a headlong charge down the cobbled track, a cloud of dust in her wake.
It was a charge born of terror and Gawain hunched forward over Gwyn's neck, wind whipping the tears from his eyes as the horse's mane lashed his face. Onward, practically flying, the world was reduced to nothing but ash and wind and the sound of her hooves smashing on the cobbles like glaciers shattering…
Onward, for an eternity. Gawain saw but did not believe the foul and sluggish river idling below them as they thundered over the Farin Bridge. The water was a rancid white-brown ooze, where once it rushed pure crystal towards the far western falls. It was only perhaps a mile further downstream of this vile discharge that Gwyn had chosen Gawain, the young prince sitting fishing in the sunshine with a nameless old man…
Onward, the terrain unceasingly white, and were it not for the blue sky it would be easy for horse and rider to lose their senses, blinded by the unrelenting sameness of it all. Contours, visible only by the shadows they cast. Not one tree. Not one blade of grass. And total silence, save for the sound of their furious charge towards castletown…
Castletown! The Keep and The Great Hall! Gawain hastily wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stared ahead. Far away, on the horizon, a familiar shape. Tiny, at this distance, but Gawain knew it as he knew his own hand. The Keep, rising tall and proud. The horse, her eyes straining to find something familiar in this awful, empty landscape, saw it too, and incredibly, her pace increased…
Raheen! Was all that Gawain could think. The name, and all it meant. Home. Family. Friends and people. Towns and villages. Forests, lakes, rivers and streams. All the verdant beauty, every tree he'd climbed as a child, every stone, every field, every blade of grass on the hallowed soil that had borne his weight for eighteen years.
Raheen! Everything he was, everything he'd ever known. The face of every man, woman and child he'd ever seen.
Raheen! Gone. Everything. Utterly.
Except for the Keep, looming closer in the distance! The Keep had endured for countless centuries. Surely nothing could harm those mighty walls?
Gwyn was slowing, and some small part of his mind knew why. This thundering charge, this eternal gallop through an unrelenting and devastated landscape had taken hours to bring them this close to home. A year and a day ago, so very long ago, and it had taken hours to reach the Downland Pass before daybreak. She was running her heart out, and was killing herself.
Raheen! Blazed in his mind. Gwyn and himself. In this desert of ash, they were all Raheen, except the Keep, and Castletown…
He tried desperately to crush the terror that held him like a vice, tried to find reason in this nightmare world around him. He had to slow Gwyn.
No sooner had he thought the words, the horse's desperate charge subsided to a gallop, and then reluctantly eased to a canter. They had reached the walls surrounding the outskirts of Castletown…
But there were no walls. Just rubble, hidden under a sheet of vile white ash. They were not built strong like the Keep! Gawain thought. They'd been little more than a gesture, a mere symbol to express a concept, that Castletown would be a bastion, a last refuge against attack. But everyone knew there would be no attack. Raheen was impregnable. One way in, and the same way out.