The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Garrett Robinson (poetry books to read TXT) 📖

come with the other refugees from Ahuroa. The trolls had not killed anyone, so I said he must be lost in the wilds. The guards eyed our weapons, but Lord Matara’s writ permitted us to be armed, and they wished us luck as we rode out.

The moment we passed into open country, I felt my whole body ease. It was a relief so sharp that it stunned me. Only the day before, I had ridden these same mountains in the open air. One night in Kahaunga had made me tense as a bowstring, yet I had not realized it until I felt it bleed away. A rueful laugh slipped out of me, and Mag glanced over.

“There is no one else around, so I know I did not miss a joke.”

I shook my head. “I was just reminded of riding from the city as a child. I always found my home less comfortable than solitude in the wilderness.”

Mag was silent for a little while. “I suppose that was true for me as well,” she said at last, her voice low. “I spent many years in the woods on my own, when I was young, and forests are still my favorite place to be by myself. They remind me of the peace I knew before I went out into the wide world—before I met you, if I am being honest. It is why I fell in love with Northwood. The trees were only a stone’s throw from my tavern, and I would walk among them often.”

I will admit I was shocked. Mag had rarely spoken to me of her youth before we met, and I had never pried. She would tell me if she wanted to, I knew. Hearing her suddenly speak of it now was not unlike when I had heard the satyrs speak of a Lord—the words were not strange on their own, but the source turned them quite shocking. I very badly wanted to ask her to tell me more, but I could hear the nervousness in her voice. She was clearly uncomfortable having said so much. I worried that if I pressed her, she might not speak of it again. And so I said nothing.

We rode on for a while in silence after that. Northwest of Kahaunga, the mountains rise up to sharp peaks, which fall steeply away until they flatten out in the little dale overlooked by the stronghold, with gentler slopes on the eastern side. We rode a narrow path that had been cut into that sharp western face, mostly used by rangers who needed to reach far villages and settlements with speed. It gave us a wonderful view down into the dale—though that was spoiled, for me at least, by the sight of how far the city had spread across the mountains. Many trees had been felled, so that the once tranquil forest had been cleared to beyond the dale’s eastern side, and homes and settlements had begun to edge up the slopes there. Though it was early morning, a thin pall already hung in the air below us, the smoke of hearths and cooking fires trapped by the mountains, giving the lower city a blurred, hazy appearance, like something half-glimpsed in a nightmare. It was a darker, dirtier thing than the thick, grey cloud cover above us.

At last our path turned around the edge of a mountain, and we were in the wilderness proper. There the road struck the top of a wide ridge, and we were able to kick our horses to a trot, making better time. Oku padded along happily with us. On occasion he would go ranging far ahead, though never out of sight, and then sit by the side of the road until we had caught up to him, before making two turns around our horses’ hooves and then running forwards again. The road grew somewhat narrow again, and began to wind around the side of peak after peak.

Shortly after we lost sight of the city, we came to the first stone bridge spanning the gap between two slopes. We stopped at its western end. By the lip of the cliff into which the bridge had been built, there was a small shelf just visible. I tried to ignore it, tried to avoid looking at it entirely. I did not succeed. A dark and hazy memory swam into my mind—a relic of my youth, and a reminder of something I would much rather have forgotten.

Mag, meanwhile, sat staring at the bridge in wonder. It was a half-span long, with its foundations set into the mountains on either end. But it had no supports in the middle, only open air between the bridge and the ground, which was a span below.

“How did they build it?” said Mag. “With no pillars, and no way to have any while they worked?”

“There are tricks,” I said. “Not that I know what they are. I am a guide, not a mason. I will admit the bridges never held much interest for me.”

“Keen eyes and a dull mind,” said Mag. “I am hardly surprised. But an evil mood, as well. Why are you so grumpy?”

“Bad memories,” I said. “Let us ride on.”

We crossed the bridge. Soon the chasms before the peaks grew less deep and less sheer, and the ground rose to meet the road. We came to another small dale like the one where Kahaunga had been built, and there was the lake that flowed off into the river that ran through the center of the city. But most of the ground here was hard and rocky, ill suited for farming. This vale could support no more than a single small village; I saw it there, on the other end of the lake, its homes perched at the water’s edge. A few boats were out.

Our side of the lake was far less gentle. We had to pick our way between boulders and across craggy breaks in the land, sharp fissures that pinched to nothing a