Chapter 12

The plains of Montcairn gave way to the Eastern Mountains without much pause, and the rugged terrain was soon proving aggravating, even for the boys. I'd refused the loan of a horse from King Tynis, convinced now that to take a horse was to signal its certain death.

So with no horse, and miles and miles to go, I walked and ran, but mostly ran. Kei and Labo would taunt me, Labo in particular was fond of pointing out that if I were a true Vulkai instead of one by adoption, I would have no trouble running all day and night.

I ignored the question of who fostered who and kept on running, but I let my magic slip loose a little as I did, and slowly worked on that very possibility to the best of my ability.

Once the mountains were truly around us, the challenge changed for all of us. The steep face of a mountain is no place for running, of that there is little doubt. There was a cart trail though, a small trade road that suffered here and there from washouts and landslides, snowfields and mud. Lots and lots of mud.

That I could run whenever the terrain allowed it, spoke of how lightly I was packed, and being lightly packed, I was forced to participate more completely in the daily hunting the boys undertook. I had my wizard's kit, a bedroll and little else save a small selection of spices and seasonings. The only item of cookware I carried was a small pot in which I brewed my lavis.

It did take a little magic to keep up with the boys, but less than I thought. Once more I considered the weaving I'd done in building my cloak of winter wolf fur and magic. Both cloak and magic had proved to be greater than I'd imagined, as I had found several times now when I'd found needed energy through it to sustain me. The cloak proved its worth again and I supplemented my running ability very little on my own because of it.

What made the Eastern Mountains so formidable was not their height, though they are one of Gaen's highest ranges, nor their ruggedness, though they are indeed rugged, but rather the incredible unending depth of them. They are the longest mountain range on Gaen, running north to south almost top to bottom, but they are wide too, presenting several hundred miles of steep, inhospitable terrain bordering most of the Eastern Sea and between the sea and the mountains, the coast lays mostly desolate and unsettled. Kaya Tuma sat atop one such lonely stretch, a mountain aerie swaddled into a high mountain valley on three sides and the fourth facing the Eastern Sea.

There are wards around the hermitage. Powerful wards writ deep into the stone of the mountains themselves. I found the first of them as we entered a tiny winding valley, just one of the countless unnamed valleys within the range.

"Go hunt us up some dinner," I told the boys, sending them back towards the west. I pulled out my rug and knelt where the runes were carved into the mountainside. It took the two of them less time to catch a few fat rabbits apiece than it did for me to complete my studies. The runes here were familiar and nothing had been done to disguise them or obfuscate their purpose. The wards were designed to discourage and misdirect the curious. The average man or non-magical beast would pass this entrance by in favor of another, perhaps even failing to notice its existence at all. Subtle, simple, and while it was low-powered, it was pervasive and persistent by design. I appreciated the minimalistic artistry of it.

With my rabbit in hand, the boys having already eaten theirs, I advanced us up the winding way past that ward. Kei and Labo shrugged off the magic of it with some small annoyance, but I think without me to follow, they'd have never known the little cut we entered was even there.

The route we followed was barely wide enough to be called a valley, hardly more than a grandiose gully. The trail followed a small stream, barely worth the description as it was barely more than a trickle of water, that ran down the middle of it for several days until trail and trickle parted ways and our path began following a wrinkle in the side of the nameless mountain that made up the gully's northern wall. A long days walking and most of another day followed on before we came to a place where the trail passed between two massive granite columns. The stone stood out so much from the rest of their surroundings that Kei commented on it.

"Why does this make me uneasy?" he asked.

"Their are wards set," I answered, letting my wizard's sight pour over the twin cliffs. Ancient, powerful wards again, yet another link in the chain that bound those within the hermitage even while it protected them. "Wards that keep what's within, in and what's without, out. We'll camp here tonight. I want to study these wards."

"Shall we hunt for dinner then while you make camp?" Labo asked.

"Do you remember the last set of wards we passed through before these?" I asked. A pair of Vulkai nods were my answer. "Do not go further than this side of those wards in your hunting," I cautioned. "You will not be able to find your way back past them if you do."

Kei and Labo hunted rabbits while I built a fire, resorting to a little magic in the end as there was nothing worth burning here, save for sparse tufts of grass and a wet, clinging lichen that covered almost every inch that wasn't covered in grass.

The wards weren't easy to study, buried as they were within the living rock that surrounded us. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put the runes out of reach, using a technique something like what I'd used in making my swords; depositing the individual molecules of material into the heart of the stone rather than etching it into the surface. I had to use my wizard's sight to see what was buried within the stone, and even then it was difficult; the runes were done on such a small scale that, taken individually, they would have been almost invisible to the naked eye. They were also arrayed in a three dimensional matrix that made reading them even more difficult. I couldn't say that I recognized the styles of anyone whose rune work I was familiar with, but that seemed hardly surprising. I did find a common thread at least, in that both wards were based on a set of very powerful binding runes called the Sinecian Castings that I recognized from my studies.

These were complex castings, and they presented one face to the world outside of them and another to the world inside them.

The entire series was built upon the concept of inertia and all its faces, physical, emotional and mental. The facets were many, and fascinating, calling up languor, placidity, contentment, acceptance, apathy and other states less prone to categorization. I got a taste of one for example, that suggested its conceptual weight was centered on 'happy-to-be-home'.