Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [24]
Equally silent, Caelan took them. A wool tunic and cloak lay across the saddle. Caelan shook snow off the garments and put them on, grateful for their warmth. He hesitated a moment, hating to be collected like this, haling to still be a child in a man’s body. But at last he climbed into the cold, stiff saddle. It was his own, the stirrups shorter now than they’d been on his last visit home. He looked at his father’s erect back. The white fur made Beva almost vanish into the snowy landscape.
The man had always sought to blend into his surroundings, to never stand out, to never insist that he be seen or heard. This inner stillness, this silence of manner, appearance, and word, only added to his great mystique.
Hut lot Caelan, it made his father impossible to approach.
Worse, he had not expected Beva to know yet, much less come for him. Beva must have overheard everything in the ceremony. Everyone in Trau would soon know of Caelan’s public disgrace, and it would mark the first failure of this famous man.
How to explain anything to the unyielding back riding in front of him?
Caelan sighed. He glanced over his shoulder at the immense walls of Rieschelhold, and still felt no remorse. His way lay elsewhere, even if he did not yet know what his life was to be. Perhaps now, at last, Beva would accept that.
Frowning, Caelan kicked his pony and followed his father home.
Chapter Five
THE SNOW FELL harder through the afternoon, the flakes large and wet. Caelan pulled up the hood of his cloak and searched the saddle pockets until he found a pair of gloves. His feet were freezing in their thin leather shoes, but he made no complaint. Concentrating on the patterns of warmth and well-being, he tried to make his toes warm. It didn’t work very well.
Beva swung his mount onto the imperial road, and Caelan followed. In silence they galloped along the empty ribbon of stone, hoofbeats echoing against the wall of forest on either side beyond the ditch. Clipping past the place where he’d been ambushed, Caelan found himself holding his breath. But no lurkers were in evidence today. Even the corpse had been dragged away, probably by wolves. The soldiers of course were long gone, with no trace of their passing except a series of fresh clearings off the road, with blackened fire sites and raw stumps sticking up jaggedly.
After about a league, the forest thinned to marshland. The imperial road rose up atop a levy, but a common road of frozen mire branched off from it, skirting the marsh and heading south toward Meunch. At this spot stood an immense archway of imported granite. Although plain of any curving or ornamentation, its architecture was foreign, exotic. The speckled stone seemed to speak of other lands, other customs, calling to travelers to seek them out. Strange letters had been etched into the base of the arch tall, spiky letters in a script as foreign as the stone.
Towering almost as high as the trees, the arch spanned the imperial road, testament to one of the emperor’s greatest achievements. The roads spanned the length and breadth of the empire, making every corner of it accessible. As for the archway itself, its sheer massive size stood as silent testament to the emperor’s power and long reach. Had the archway stood at the edge of a large town such as Ornselag, imperial troops would have maintained sentries and a check- post.
Beva reined up beneath the arch and gave the ponies a breather. He watched the forest and sky with extra care and seemed reluctant to venture out into the open marshlands.
“What’s wrong?” Caelan asked, thinking of the shadowy denizens said to inhabit the marshlands.
“We must gallop on,” Beva said. “We dare not stay long in the open. Come.”
“But—”
Beva spurred his mount, and the pony plunged off the paved road and down a short embankment to the crude track that led north. Caelan followed more cautiously, wondering why his father had not lit the healer’s lantern bobbing on the pole. Normally it was a signal to all robbers that this was a man of good traveling on a mission of mercy, lacking money