Murtagh chuckled. No. That they wouldn’t.
He coaxed his mare to sidestep over to Bachel. “I notice you have no dogs.”
Disdain sharpened the witch’s angled features. “And for good reason. They are blasphemous creatures.”
“Dogs?”
“They refuse to accept the insight one may receive through the power of this place. No dog will stay here in Nal Gorgoth, and that has ever been the case. Crows are wiser. They understand the promise of dream.”
“How will you drive the boars, though?”
Her hooded gaze grew mysterious. “You shall see, Kingkiller. We will not need such assistance as you are accustomed to.”
As the group organized their provisions, Murtagh spotted Alín watching from among the temple’s shadowed pillars, a furtive figure half hidden behind the carved stone.
When everyone in the party was mounted up, Bachel lifted a spear over her head and cried, “With me!” and spurred her shaggy stallion forward, away from the temple and into the village.
Murtagh was tempted to brandish Zar’roc, as if rallying troops, but instead he spurred his mare and followed at a sedate pace. The cultists trailed after, and Thorn brought up the rear, his weighted tread shaking dust from the shingles of the buildings.
Dozens of villagers gathered along the streets to watch them depart. Murtagh spotted a surprising number of children among their ranks. It seems like there ought to be more people here, given how many children they have, he said to Thorn. It’s odd.
The dragon answered: Perhaps they send the younglings elsewhere when they are grown.
Once the party reached the edge of Nal Gorgoth, Bachel reined in her stallion and pointed toward the southern side of the valley. “Do you see that small gap between the mountains, Kingkiller? Where the trees follow a stream out of the heights? That is our destination.”
“We will find boars there, my Lady?”
“Enough to feed a thunder of dragons!” Then she spurred her stallion again, bending low over the horse’s neck as he sprang forward with a startled snort over the blackened earth.
Grieve scowled and lashed the side of his mare as he followed. “Keep with the Speaker, blast you!” he shouted at the warriors who filled out their party.
With a clamor of drumming hooves and the cries of the excited men, the group headed south toward the narrow wedge of space that separated one mountain from the next.
It will be a wonder if we don’t scare away all the boars with this ruckus, said Murtagh.
Thorn surprised him then by taking flight; his wings cast a crimson shadow upon the group as he soared over them. I will scout ahead and see where our prey might be, before you drive them from their feeding grounds and watering holes.
Murtagh watched with some regret as Thorn rose with enviable ease above the foothills. He wished he were riding Thorn instead of the mare with the coat of liver chestnut; he hated being left behind among strangers.
Most of all, he hated how familiar a feeling it was.
The air grew warmer as they neared the sliver of a side valley, and more and more wisps of smoke rose like garden eels from the crusted earth. A few times, a scrap of wind-torn smoke struck him in the face, and he gagged from the overwhelming stench of sulfur. The land had a charred and barren appearance, as if razed by fire in the recent past.
Bachel had slowed her stallion to a more measured pace, so Murtagh rode up next to her. “I’ve never seen a place like this before, except for the Burning Plains far to the south. And those don’t smell of brimstone.”
The witch nodded. “There are many such places, Kingkiller, scattered about Alagaësia, though you will not easily find them. There is another, not far south of here: the barrows of Anghelm, where Kulkarvek the Terrible is buried in state.”
Murtagh fought to hide his reaction. Kulkarvek was the only Urgal known to have united their fractious race under a single banner, an event that had occurred long before the fall of the Riders, if stories were to be trusted. His resting place was one of the other locations—along with the ruins of El-harím and Vroengard Island—that Umaroth had warned Thorn and Murtagh to avoid.
But what bothered him most was the implication that there were many such places throughout Alagaësia: places where the ground was burnt and the air smelled of brimstone.
Why aren’t they more widely known? he asked Thorn. Even if they’re in remote, isolated locations, surely the Riders or others would have noticed any place that smelled like this. It would be difficult to hide, especially from the air.
A weirding veil, perhaps? A spell that hides the obvious from sight?
Wards ought to block that sort of thing.
It depends on the spell. You know that. It could be an enchantment of a sort none now are familiar with. Or something akin to the Banishing of the Names.
Murtagh glanced up at Thorn. Dragon magic?…Do you feel something of that here?
I do not know what I feel, only that the land seems alive, despite the charring.
The world narrowed around them as the hunting party entered the side valley and the mountains pinched close, until the foothills were only a few hundred feet apart and dense ranks of trees blocked their sight. It was good, Murtagh thought, that Thorn was in the air and not there in such tight quarters.
Bachel led the way along a well-trodden path that wound between the tall pines.
Past the gap, the valley widened again, and Murtagh beheld what elsewhere in the Spine would have been a long alpine field where deer and bears and other wildlife would gather. Not here. Here the earth was still scorched and blackened, and the trees were dead and skeletal—bare of all but a few clumps of brittle needles. None of which made as strong an impression on Murtagh as the enormous numbers of mushrooms growing from the ground.
They came in all kinds. Brown-capped, white-capped, round as puffballs, tiered like the temple in Nal Gorgoth, broad as shields or as tall and narrow as a spear; the profusion of forms was overwhelming. There were gilled mushrooms, and mushrooms as red as ladybugs, and huge woody funguses that rose higher than a horse-mounted man. A rich, savory smell scented the area—like a cut of well-cooked beef—and thin veils of brown spores drifted upward along currents of rising air, mixing with the wisps of vapor from the ground.
Amid the field and forest of mushrooms, Murtagh spotted dark shapes moving through the shadows: monstrous wild boars, ridge-backed and covered in coarse black bristles.
“They eat the mushrooms and grow to exceptional size because of it,” Bachel explained, bringing her horse alongside his. “It gives their meat a taste unlike any other.”
Murtagh shook his head, still taking in the sight. “I’ve never seen or heard of mushrooms like these.”
“The ground here suits them as much as it is hostile to green growing plants.”
From above, it looks as if the ground is covered with melted fat, said Thorn, circling over the far end of the narrow crevice splitting the Spine, some miles away.
Delightful, Murtagh replied.
Bachel continued: “As you can see, we need no drivers. We are our own drivers. We will push toward the head of the valley, and the boars will gather before us. If your dragon—”
“He is only mine as much as I am his.”
Her eyelids drooped with what seemed like amusement. “Of course, Kingkiller. If Thorn wishes to hunt there at the other end, he might help us and so trap the boars between our spears and his teeth and claws.”