The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [69]
Again, I shivered. Whatever it was, as miserably normal as the rain and the surroundings seemed, the cause of the rain was not precisely natural. Why, I couldn’t say; but that the extent of the rain was unnatural was clear, even while I could detect no sign of chaos.
The water was natural. Gairloch enjoyed lapping it up from several of the brooks, but when I stopped to let him graze, he did not seem particularly interested in the straggly grass. So I pulled myself back into the saddle and finished munching on the travel bread I had brought from the Travelers’ Rest.
The other unnatural thing was the road itself, which ran straight where it could and curved gently when it could not and climbed gradually if neither straightness nor curves were possible. Once Gairloch and I had passed through the lower hills, in the higher hills the road narrowed not a jot. Nor did the grade steepen. The sides of the hills seemed planed away at a gentle angle, without the overhanging boulders or outcrops I had half-expected to see.
In time, I almost struck my forehead.
“…wizard’s road…of course!” Magistra Trehonna had mentioned that there were some in Candar, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the details. She was even more boring than Talryn.
Wheee…eeee…added Gairloch.
While I wasn’t that good at extending my senses, particularly in the rain, once I realized what might be there I could almost feel the hard white stone pavement under the packed clay.
I shook my head as the light dimmed, and Gairloch plodded downhill toward a few scattered lights that the intermittent stone posts had led me to believe might be Hrisbarg.
Three or four kays short of the town the road forked, and a large arrow roughly chiseled into a stone post twice the size of most distance stones pointed down the right-hand branch. Above the arrow were the letters HSBG.
The left-hand road continued straight, without lights or dwellings nearby, toward the next line of hills. Only a line of coach tracks indicated that the road was ever used.
After the turn, the remainder of the route to Hrisbarg was churned, muddy, and, in parts, required near-fording of the streamlets that meandered across the excuse for a road that we traveled. I almost wished we had stayed with the wizard’s road, gloomy as it was, that had arrowed straight into the hills—especially after it began to rain again, the cold pelting flow that quickly resoaked my cloak.
Wheee…eeeee…eeuuhhh…
“I agree. But do we really have any options?”
Gairloch was silent on that point.
The first huts we came to were roofless, dark, and deserted. Then came huts with roofs, if apparently deserted. Finally Gairloch set his hooves on the thoroughly-churned mud of central Hrisbarg.
The main street in Hrisbarg seemed to consist of equal sections of puddles and mud. Instead of stone pavement, or even stone walks with storm drains, they used mud. The stores were fronted with raised plank walkways. Some had posts and steps for tying carriage horses or single horses, but most just had plain planks slapped down.
Even in the drizzle, I could see the woodwork of those walks was abysmal—green wood, rough spiking, not even a rudimentary effort to keep the walking surface level.
Whhffffff…
Gairloch shook his head and consequently his mane, spraying pony-scented water all over my cloak and face. The cloak was designed for it. My face wasn’t. My obvious belt pouch had several silvers remaining, enough for a night at an inn and a stable for Gairloch—particularly after the day we had completed and the kind of night it was turning out to be.
One or two stores had oil lamps in front, but Hrisbarg lacked street lamps as such. Even with my excellent night vision, I was having trouble, what with the drizzle and the strangeness of Candar.
Whhhhhffffff…
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