The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [53]
“You the extra guard?”
Creslin turns. “Creslin.”
“I’m Zern. You answer to me. Why are you unstrapping the packs?”
“Because Gerhard told me to. Told me to put them on the wagon, and to use this horse.”
“All right. You start up front with me as soon as you finish. We’re late already.”
Creslin’s expression is sober as he looks around the assemblage, taking in the two overloaded wagons, two pack mules, and the two other guards.
XXIX
THE PALE-GRAY granite surface of the road does not glitter, although, from certain angles in full sun, the stones look nearly white. Each massive stone block is fitted to the next more smoothly than the fine marble floors of many palaces. Broad enough for more than two wagons abreast, this road stretches so precisely east and west that at high noon no shadows fall upon its surface, even where it drives between the ridges of the Easthorns and the not-quite mountains to the east and west of Fairhaven itself.
Gerhard’s wagons roll onto those granite blocks from the packed clay of the Certan road, past the toll station manned by white-clad road guards.
Derrild had not mentioned tolls, but the economics of the wizards’ efforts and the military implications are clear enough. The road is a weapon in itself, enabling cavalry and supplies to travel through the mountains and across the rolling plains and fields far faster than otherwise, even faster than on the flat and winding roads that cross Certis and Gallos. But the road has not spanned the Easthorns yet, although rumors indicate that the wizards continue to press forward, boasting of the not-too-distant day when it will and of the time when they will at last challenge even the mighty Westhorns.
But why has Certis let the wizards construct such a road? Creslin asks Zern.
“Who knows? Gerhard told me once, but I forgot. Something about the viscount getting a tithe. He gets some sort of cut and the free use of the road for his troops . . . something like that.” Zern’s face screws up, almost as an afterthought. “What’s it to you, pretty boy, anyway?”
“Not much. First time I’ve seen anyone charged to use a road.”
“Bet they don’t have roads like this where you come from.”
“You’re right,” Creslin agrees. “I’ve never seen a road like this.” He hasn’t, and while the engineering and the stonework are magnificent, he has that familiar sense of white wrongness shrouding the area. Not the road itself, but the rock walls flanking the sections where the road passes through the hills.
“Bet they don’t have much of anything where you come from.”
“Not much,” Creslin answers absently.
“Can you use that toy on your back?”
“I have, once or twice.” Creslin studies the almost unnoticeable grade of the stones and observes that the road is much lower than the surrounding hills, almost as if it were designed to rest on the underlying solid rock.
“For who? Some spice merchant with a private army?”
“A merchant named Derrild.”
“Who’d you work with?”
“Hylin.”
“Oh . . .” Zern’s heavy face screws up as though he is trying to remember something. “Wait! Is he a thin man, long nose, who just finished a run from Suthya?”
“Yes. I joined them on the way back.”
“Shit. Forget I said anything, all right?”
“Fine,” Creslin agrees, still preoccupied with the road and the white wrongness behind and around it.
Zern drops back . . . slowly, until he is even with the lead wagon, where Gerhard sits next to the driver on the high bench.
Creslin, puzzled by the sudden change in Zern’s attitude, extends his senses on the light breezes, fighting his way through the unseen white mist.
“. . . know who he is. The killer . . . the one I told you about. Took all of Frosee’s band single-handed.”
“. . . thought he might be—”
“. . . dangerous.”
“. . . Hardly. Dangerous to anyone who attacks us. Good cheap protection.” Gerhard laughs.
“. . . attack us? When has—”
“Forget it.”
Creslin, absently, widens the gap between himself and the wagon. Already