Looking beyond the intersection, Kharl could see, farther uphill, where Hill Road continued and turned to the northeast, rising evenly toward a gap in the forested hillside above the regularly spaced dwellings on the lower hillside. He looked at the hillside higher still, noting that despite the covering of trees there was a pattern, almost as if the entire hillside had once been smoothed, then regular sets of rounded mounds, all of differing sizes, had been placed there, with the trees being added later. There was something…He nodded to himself. Buildings, or dwellings, had once been spaced there, on each side of long and regular streets, and they had covered the entire hillside, and they had fallen into ruins and been covered by time and vegetation. That also suggested that few, if any, people had lived in the area, because the ruined dwellings had not been extensively quarried for building stones.
The cooper walked on uphill for more than a kay before the houses began to thin out, each having more ground, including small orchards with trees in orderly rows and stone-walled meadows. The wall stones were neatly cut and mortared, but even from the side of the road where he walked, Kharl sensed that they were old.
A young woman walked downhill toward the center of Southport, pushing a handcart and accompanied by a girl who barely came to her waist. As the two neared him, Kharl saw, in the railed space on the top of the handcart, several baskets covered with cloths.
Her eyes strayed from Kharl to the staff, and a faint smile crossed her lips as she spoke.
Kharl didn’t understand a syllable of the clipped words, although he thought she was asking him to buy something. At that point, he noted the single shortsword at her belt.
She spoke again, haltingly, in what was not her native tongue. “The buns…the best.”
Kharl was hungry. That he had to admit. “How much?”
She looked puzzled.
Kharl fished two coppers out of his wallet and held up one.
She shook her head.
He held up two.
She nodded and lifted the cloth off the top of a basket set in a rack on the cart. Then she pointed to the raisin buns and held up one finger. Kharl handed over the two coppers and waited to see her reaction. She studied the coins, then nodded.
Kharl took the largest bun, easily the size of a small loaf. “Thank you.”
She smiled a last time before continuing onward.
Kharl found that it took him little time to eat the entire bun. As he finished, he licked his fingers and wished he had an ale, but all he had seen on the road nearby were dwellings.
Several thoughts crossed his mind. First, he wondered about the woman with her daughter. The patrollers in Southport had spoken a version of Brystan, or perhaps Brystan was a version of what the patrollers spoke…but the woman had not. Was another language spoken in Southport? Or did the patrollers at the port know two tongues? He hadn’t thought about it, but he certainly should have.
The second thought was more troubling. Why was he climbing up the road? He’d started out just to look around, but he had found himself almost compelled to continue uphill. Why? He studied the road and the dwellings, their neatly tended gardens and orchards that had already fruited and been picked, with the trees’ leaves graying for winter.
There was a pull of some sort. Not exactly like the white mist or the blackness of Nylan, but similar, and it seemed to be coming from somewhere slightly uphill and to the east. After a moment, Kharl shook his head and resumed walking. After another hundred cubits, he found his feet turning right onto a lane that wound away from the main road. The lane turned more to the east and, after several hundred rods, passed through two stone posts, half-buried in berry bushes and set nearly fifty cubits apart.
Ahead was a much larger mound-one that was a least three hundred cubits in length and fifty high. It had no trees upon it, just low bushes and tall grasses. Kharl stopped well short of where the foot-trod path came to a gradual end in browning grass and blotted his forehead. All the walking had left him warmer than he had anticipated.
There was a sense of sadness, of ancient sorrow, emanating from the mound, and the feeling of attraction had subsided. Kharl kept looking, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He could only sense a diffuse and ancient chaos emanating from the mound, and that chaos was subtly but clearly different from that which he had experienced with the white wizard.
“Well…have you figured it out yet?”
Kharl turned to see a thin white-haired woman, wearing a faded gray tunic trimmed with scarlet, a garment that appeared almost military, yet one that was tailored to her. A miasma of blackness surrounded her, as it had the mage in Nylan.
“I beg your pardon?” he said politely.
“What drew you here, of course.” She pointed to his staff. “That’s the black staff of a beginning mage. Most never make it beyond that. With your age, you’re probably one of them.”
“I’m not a mage. I’m just a ship’s carpenter taking a walk,” he replied. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting late berries from back there, and, when I feel like it, waiting for folk like you. They all come here, sooner or later.” Her laugh was knowing, but full and almost soft, not the sort of cackle Kharl would have expected from a gaunt white-haired woman with eyes that had seen too much. “It’s the power in the mound. What would you do with it, if you could?”
Kharl thought about denying what he’d sensed, then shrugged. “Nothing. I wouldn’t know where to start. Anyway, it’s the wrong kind of power for me. Could be that any kind is.”
“Power will come to you,” she replied. “Best you think about how you will use it, or it will end up using you.” She turned.
“Is that all you have to say?” Kharl asked.
The woman stopped and half turned. “What else would you have me say?”
“I don’t know…You have a certain power yourself…”
She laughed once more. “Nothing at all, a trifle. When you see true black power, you will understand that. At least, I would hope so. Good day, carpenter.” She turned and walked through the grass and northward into the bushes…and then disappeared.
Kharl just looked for a time, then shook his head. He studied the mound once more, but could find nothing beyond the ancient sadness and strange buried combination of order and chaos. He finally walked back to Hill Road and downhill toward the harbor. When he reached Third Circle, remembering what the harbor patroller had said, he turned southwest, searching for a café or tavern that looked both inviting and not terribly costly.
In the first block he walked along after turning off Hill Road, he passed a goldsmith’s, then a coppersmith’s and a jeweler’s, while on the south side of the street, he could make out a shop window filled with fine cabinetry of all types, and another displaying a gray cloak trimmed in a gold brocade. A tall gray-haired woman in shimmering black trousers, a white shirt, a gray jacket-and the paired shortswords at her belt-nodded as she passed him. An older man, also well dressed, but in a rich dark gray tunic and jacket and without weapons, smiled politely.
Kharl had the definite feeling that, while there might be taverns on Third Circle, his wallet would be far lighter if he stopped in any of them. He decided to walk another block or so before heading down closer to the harbor.
“Carpenter! Ser!”
Kharl turned at the call, because he couldn’t imagine anyone calling him that unless it was someone from the Seastag. He saw a sailor standing beside a patroller outside a shop across the street. In the doorway was a tradesman in a leather vest, gesturing animatedly to the patroller.
Kharl crossed the street and stopped several cubits short of the trio, now standing in front of a narrow window displaying various items crafted from silver. It took a moment for him to recall the sailor’s name. “Yes, Flasyn?”
“Ser…they think I took something…but I didn’t.”