The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [18]
“The interruption, it be as naught.” Grallezar pointed at a cushion. “Sit you down and tell.”
“I shall do exactly that.” Dallandra flung her arms into the air and danced a few steps. “It bears on the dragon book, too. Neither of them really exists.”
“Hah!” Grallezar said. “So we did wonder.” She glanced at Branna and laughed. “You do look dumbfounded utterly.”
“I am,” Branna said. “Or do you mean, they don’t exist on the physical plane like ordinary matter?”
“Just that.” Dallandra sat down on a cushion. “You learn fast.”
After he spent some futile days searching for Berwynna’s lost mule and the book it carried, Rori took a roundabout route back to the royal alar. On his previous scouting trips, he’d seen parties of Horsekin raiders on the move. Somewhere they had to have a central force, most likely one that was traveling toward the new fort he’d seen a-building. The logical starting point for this central army lay near Taenbalapan and Braemel. Braemel, Bravelmelim as it was known in the old days, lay more west than north. He passed over fields and pastures tucked into the mountain valleys and terraces—green with crops—that climbed the lower hills like steps. Now and then he saw flocks of sheep as well as cows grazing in the mountain meadows. That first night he picked off a cow, in fact, for his dinner and found her fat and tasty.
In the morning he reached Braemel, a prosperous-looking place lying in a broad valley, a semicircle of houses set along straight streets, with the river along one edge of the town and good stone walls surrounding it on the other three sides. A straggle of huts stood outside the west gate, but when he flew low enough, he could see that they were guard stations and barracks. His shadow, vast in the morning sun, swept across the road like an omen. Shouting, soldiers ran out to watch him as he spiraled higher, well out of arrow range, and flew on.
Tanbalapalim, to give it its ancient name, lay spread across three hills. A river cut through the town, entering and leaving through breaches in the outer walls. In the old days, two graceful bridges made of stone overlaid with different colors of marble had arched over the smooth-flowing water like twin rainbows. Although stubby stone piers still jutted from the riverbanks, the bands of marble had been scavenged for other projects. The Gel da’thae had built new bridges of wood, reinforced here and there with plain stone.
When Rori flew over the town, he saw only one wooden bridge still whole, and the other burned down to the waterline. Fire had swept through the eastern sectors, leaving nothing standing but the occasional blackened stone wall. Ashes covered the ground in sweeps of gray. Had there been riots, he wondered, when the Gel da’Thae realized that their new Horsekin neighbors had taken control of their city? The western half still stood, but as he circled far above it, he saw only a few people moving in the streets.
Not far south of Tanbalapalim, Rori found what he’d been looking for. An army marched down the road beside the river, several thousand men by his rough estimate, more than half of them riders, the rest spearmen. Behind them trailed a long supply train, and small boats glided beside them on the slow-flowing river. He circled them several times to study, then headed for the mountains to the west. At a mountain pass above Braemel lay another ancient site. On the off chance that the Horsekin had decided to occupy it as well, Rori flew there, only to find it deserted.
As he drifted on the wind high above it, Rori saw why the ancestors of the Westfolk had named it Garanbeltangim, the “Reaching Mountain.” Ancient layers and slabs of rock make up the Western Mountains, all twisted and folded, heaved out of the earth by some colossal cataclysm, perhaps, then washed bare by millennia of rain and snow. The old tales of giants may be true, that in their final war they threw huge rocks and slabs at one another and in the process built the peaks of