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By Root 546 0

flowers heavy on the scented air and the sun warm on their faces. Clouds were massing west, however, and there was a clear possibility of rain by nightfall. Under the best of conditions it would take them several days just to navigate as far as the Eastland and the beginning of their search for the mysterious Truls Rohk. In the old days, before invasion and occupation by the Federation army, they could never have gone this way. Directly in their path lay the Lowlands of Clete, a vast, dismal bog choked with deadwood and scrub, shrouded in mist and devoid of life. Beyond that were the Black Oaks, an immense forest that had claimed more victims than either of the young men cared to count, most to mishap and starvation, but some, in earlier times, to the huge wolves that were once its fiercest denizens. All this was daunting enough, but even after navigating bog and woods, a traveler wasn’t safe. Just east of the Black Oaks was the Mist Marsh, a treacherous swamp in which, it was rumored, creatures of enormous power and formidable magic prowled. Below the marsh, and running south for a hundred miles, were the Battlemound Lowlands, another rugged, difficult stretch of country populated by Sirens, deadly plants that could lure and hypnotize by mimicking voices and shapes, seize with tentacle-like roots, paralyze with flesh-numbing needles, and devour their victims at leisure.

None of this was anything the cousins wanted to encounter, but all were difficult to avoid in making passage below the Rainbow Lake. Any route that would take them above the Rainbow Lake would cost them an additional three days at least and involved dangers of their own. Traveling farther south required a detour of better than a hundred miles and would put them almost to the Prekkendorran, a place no one in his right mind wanted to be.

But the Federation had realized this, as well, during the time of its occupation of Leah and so had built roads through Clete and the Black Oaks to facilitate the movement of men and supplies. Many of these roads had fallen into disrepair and could no longer be used by wagons, but all were passable by men on horseback. Quentin, because he was the older of the two, had explored more thoroughly the lands they intended to pass through, and was confident they could find their way to the Anar without difficulty.

True to his prediction, they made good progress that first day. By midday, they had ridden out of the Highlands and into the dismal morass of Clete. Sun and sky disappeared and the cousins were buried beneath a dismal gray shroud of mist and gloom. But the road remained visible, and they pressed on. Their pace slowed as the terrain grew more treacherous, scrub and tree limbs closing in so that they were forced to duck and weave as they went, guiding their horses around encroaching pools of quicksand and bramble patches, picking their way resolutely through the haze. Shadows moved all about them, some cast by movements of light, others by things that had somehow managed to survive in this blasted land. They heard sounds, but the sounds were not identifiable. Their conversation died away and time slowed. Their concentration narrowed to keeping safely on the road.

But by the approach of nightfall, they had navigated the lowlands without incident and moved into the forbidding darkness of the Black Oaks. The road here was less uneven and better traveled, the way open and clear as they rode into a steadily lengthening maze of shadows. With twilight’s fall, they stopped within a clearing and made camp for the night. A fire was built, a meal prepared and eaten, and bedding laid out. The cousins joked and laughed and told stories for a time, then rolled into their blankets and fell asleep.

Sleep lasted until just after midnight, when it began to rain so hard that the clearing was flooded in a matter of minutes. Bek and Quentin snatched up their gear and retreated to the shelter of a large conifer, covering themselves with their travel cloaks as they sat beneath a canopy of feathery branches and watched the rain sweep through