"Going to see the sea," added Brink, his tilted sapphirine eyes atwinkle, "and perhaps ship out on an Arbalinian trader."
"He wants to go as cabin crew," said Tindel, disparagingly, jerking a thumb toward Brink.
"W'll it's not likely they'll take us on as pilots, y'ninny," responded Brink. "Nor as loaders or haulers or any other such. Or would you be the captain?"
"We c'd be lookouts, I say," said Tindel, pointing a finger toward one of his own gemlike eyes, amber in the lanternlight. "Especially at night."
"What, and get up on one of those tall masts? Not me, bucco. If you want to climb atop a high swaying pole, well, that's your own doings. But as for me…"
And so it went between these two, squabbling, the best of friends.
And the Elves smiled at their antics.
The next morning, towing six mules laden with supplies, Arin and her companions prepared to set forth. As they came to the eastern pontoon bridge leading across the Rissanin and into the Greatwood, they saw the Waerlinga readying to cast off their cargo-laden float.
Arin handed over the tether of her mule to Melor and then rode down to the raft. "Beware of Bellon Falls, wee ones; ye wouldn't want to get swept over."
"Bellon Falls?" asked Brink.
"Aye. On the Argon-some twenty leagues south of where the Rissanin joins that river."
Brink scratched his head. "Twenty leagues? Sixty miles?"
"Yes, you ninny," answered Tindel. "Twenty leagues; sixty miles." Tindel then turned to Arin. "But what's this about a falls?"
"Where the Argon flows over the Great Escarpment. It plummets a thousand feet into the Cauldron below."
"A thousand feet!" exclaimed Brink. He reached into a map case and hauled out a roll of parchment and peered at it a moment, then shook his head and said, "No falls. No escarpment. No Cauldron. We're going to have to get this map corrected, Tin."
Arin's eyes flew wide in astonishment. Imagine these two setting out on a float trip without knowing the perils of the river before them.
"Thank you, Lady Arin," said Brink.
"Ar, yar, thanks," added Tindel. Then he jerked his head toward the fortress. "Come on, Brink. Daylight's aburning."
As the Waerlinga trudged back toward the caer, Arin could hear Tindel proclaiming, "I told you you couldn't trust a Riverman, Brink. Why, we almost drowned in those rapids upstream, and now we discover the map we bought also doesn't show the falls or escarpment or…"
Arin rejoined her comrades across the pontoon bridge, and just before entering the woods she looked back at the Waerlinga. They waved a cheery good-bye, then disappeared under the raised portcullis and through the gateway beyond.
Arin turned and followed her companions into the green galleries of the Greatwood. Swiftly Caer Lindor was lost in the foliage behind. And as they entered the timberland, Arin wondered what unexpected rapids and cataracts sheer and unknown perils lay on her own path ahead.
CHAPTER 15
Bounded on the north by the River Rissanin, on the east by the plains of Riamon, on the south by the Glave Hills, and on the west by the broad Argon and a portion of the Great Escarpment, there lies a vast timberland stretching some seven hundred miles in length and two hundred in width. It is the Greatwood, one of the mightiest forests in all of Mithgar.
In this woodland dwells the race of men known as the Baeron. Huge they are, the males growing to six feet ten or more, the females to six feet six. And like their kindred in the Great Greenhall to the north, they revere and husband the land and all it brings.
In the Greatwood, too, it is rumored that Hidden Ones dwell, yet this forest does not have the warded air of Blackwood, Darda Erynian, the Great Greenhall. If Hidden Ones dwell within, they signal it not.
In the midst of the northern half of the Greatwood there exists an immense area where only grass grows; trees encroach not upon this mighty meadow, some eighty miles by forty. It is simply called The Clearing, and here it is that the Baeron gather the week preceding and following each Mid-Year's Day to sing of the deeds of their kindred and to seek wives or husbands. These are powerful days of kinship and courtship and celebration, there in The Clearing, and when they are over, the Baeron men and women, some newly mated, fade back into these wide woods, returning unto scattered thorps or to isolated dwellings…
… there in the vast Greatwood.
CHAPTER 16
It was not the time of the solstice when Arin and her companions rode through the Greatwood; it was instead July, and the sun shone down bright and hot. Yet under the sheltering bower of the leafy forest canopy, the dappled shade remained temperate throughout the long days as the Elven band slowly made their way through the dense woodland. They did not meet any Baeron during the easterly trek, nor did they see at the corner of the eye any evidence of the Fey. Hence only woodland birds and forest animals saw them passing through-or so it seemed-as they picked their way among the trees by day and camped in the forest by night. And one late afternoon some seven days after entering the Greatwood they emerged onto the rolling plains of Riamon.
The following day dawned to a mizzling rain as the Elves set out across the open wold on their eastward course, bearing a point or two northerly. In the distance to their left they could see through the drizzle the low crests of a spur of the Rimmen Mountains. They rode parallel to this spur for the next four days ere the mountains swung away to the north to join the main chain running east and west.
In the days that followed, the mountains remained in view 'gainst the distant northern horizon, as the Elves made their way across open rolling land. And another fifteen days elapsed ere they came in mid of day to the village of Bridgeton, there where the Landover Road crossed over the Ironwater River. There, too, the Sea Road began, following southward alongside the Ironwater all the way to Rhondor, a city in the foothills above the great basin known as Hel's Crucible. The road then followed alongside the foothills and the river and down to the shores of the ocean, rather than go through the Crucible itself, for that place was aptly named: hot, barren, arid, it was a deep bowl stretching a hundred miles onward to abruptly fetch up against a high stone barrier between it and the Avagon Sea.
Arin and her companions put up in the Red Goose in Bridgeton, in this traders' town, and rested the remainder of that day and all the next, replenishing their diminished supplies and enjoying as well hot baths and hot meals and cool ale and rich red wine… and sleeping on soft featherbeds. And they sang sad and sweet and rousing songs in the common room of the inn, to the delight of the townsfolk and guests alike, for although bards came through now and again, it was well known that Elven songs and Elven singers were the best of them all… or so it was said. Regardless as to whether or not this belief is true, the tavern was packed to overflowing when the news spread that "Elves, real Elves, are singing in the Goose."
The following day Arin and her comrades crossed the stone bridge above the Ironwater, and as they did so, two men on a great, rough, rope-bound raft of logs waved gaily up to them as they floated below downstream, perhaps logger-merchants from Dael riding the timber to Rhondor, a city of tile and clay and brick, where wood is precious.
Eastward fared the Elves along the Landover Road, intending to follow the tradeway all the way to the town of Vorlo on the border of Aralan. Steadily they wended along the road, an arc of the Rimmen Mountains in the distance to their left, the miles passing dustily beneath the shod hooves. They rode by day and stayed in crofters' haylofts or in wayside inns or in open-air camps by night. On the ninth day after leaving Bridgeton they rode up a long slope toward a low set of hills, and late on the following day they crossed over this running ridge connecting the Rimmen Mountains in the north to the Skarpal Mountains in the south. They had come into Garia and they rode down onto the broad plains of this land. It was the twentieth day of August, and they had yet some eighteen hundred miles to go to reach Darda Vrka.