A shower during the night left the college walkways and streets damp, but the growing eastern light promised it would be dried up, for all that Euris would not be around to see it. The early morning air still held a chill. Euris left her room, slinging her heavy bag, that she had packed the night before, over her shoulder. She made her way to the stables to saddle her horse and arrange her traveling kit, unsure if her shivers were from the morning air or nervous excitement. She supposed she was entitled to this tremor of excitement or fear or some mixture of all her emotions at once. This was why she had come to the College, after all, to become a Knight and go on a Quest. This was her moment.

Soon enough, she was on her way to the agreed meeting place, the horses’ shoes clicking against the cobblestone street, echoing loudly in the still morning silence. Gath looked better than she had yet seen him as he sat on his horse just inside the College of Swords’ side of the bridge. He had traded in his robe for a traveling outfit of riding leathers she liked much better than she did the shapeless, rumpled robe, and he had some really old, worn, leather boots which had likely seen their better days many years ago. She suspected he was like her, and just kept putting new soles on them. And his face was brighter. He seemed to be excited about the trip. They exchanged their good mornings, and Gath shared with her a pastry he had smuggled out of the College of Sorcery for breakfast. They meandered up through the streets of the capital, towards the North Gate. Euris felt anticipation for the Quest, but a curious sadness as she passed the shops and places she knew well. The Gate was not yet open, but the guards recognized her and quickly made way for them. She accepted their good wishes for the Quest, and the two were out of the city and on their way. As the gate closed behind her, she felt as if a part of her life was being imprisoned in a place where she may never be able to return. Only the open road in front of her kept her from dwelling on such feelings. She felt as she did when she left South Port to come north to the College, with the same sense of an unknown horizon opening before her. Even Gath was breathing much deeper, his breath fogging in front of him in the morning air, and he seemed hale as he confidently sat on his horse, guiding it down the lanes of the outlying districts near the city. The sun rose to their right.

The journey north was long, but comfortable. Since they were riding, Gath’s infirmity did not slow them down, and they made good time. A few times, Euris had been out in the countryside, and knew several good inns along the way. They alternated camping under the starlight with staying at the good inns Euris could recommend. Gath shared her opinion that camping was, in many cases, preferable to a bad inn. The unwary traveler was apt to encounter bed bugs, lice, and tainted food when trusting an unknown inn, not to mention pickpockets and horse thieves. The King kept these latter on a short leash, of course, but they still existed and the two travelers had no particular wish to get entangled with such and have to wait for the King’s Sheriffs to sort out any misfortune. The College had so many travelers going all over the kingdom all the time that a traveler’s network had become fairly well established, with word circulating on the best places to stay. The best inns encouraged this, anyway, since so much College travel was paid for by a travel stipend, or sponsored by nobles, and they only wanted to encourage a steady stream of repeat College business. Most of the inns at the major kingdom crossroads and waysides were part of this informal network, but as the roadways thinned out and became smaller, the network broke down because of infrequent travel.

At some point, Euris’ geographical knowledge ran out, as if they’d passed some invisible boundary. She had traveled a lot to the east, into the heart of the kingdom, and had been to the northeast to the hunting preserves on several occasions. She had rarely been to the direct north, in the lands immediately north of the capital. Gath had passed through the kingdom’s midlands only rarely. Neither knew much about the roads and areas, in the midlands, other than to just keep pointing their horses north. This they did, until gradually they seemed to cross another invisible boundary line and Gath began to tell her more and more details about the lands through which they were riding. He was back into the areas where he had grown up, and he knew the lay of the land well enough to steer them in the direction they needed to go. The main north road had taken them too far east, and he chose another road he said would take them more directly to the Morranreach.

Their conversation on the way north had been sparse, and centered on people and places they knew from the college. Mostly places she knew, because Gath had not seemed to be about much in the city itself. He knew many of the best book dealers and scribal supply houses, as she might have expected, but was not much for visiting the inns. The most surprising thing they had in common was a fondness for an almost unknown little shop that imported fruits from all around the kingdom. Gath explained that his illness limited what he could eat to an extent, and the fruits were a welcome part of his diet.

She tried to draw Gath out to tell more about himself, but it was not until they got into areas he remembered that he began to say a little more. He told of growing up in the Morranreach, and the odd jobs he had, and meeting Master Aeral in an inn where he worked shoveling ashes out of the fire. He had been an orphan, on his own, surviving. Gath was a storyteller, she found out, who could embellish the most minor incident from his memory into a long story, but would say little about himself overall.

In her turn, she told him that she had never been so far north, and described her own life by the sea in South Port. The days on the beach, swimming and sailing, and the times she had been on her father’s huge three-masted ship out into the deep sea, and the one year when she was eleven and they spent the summer in the Three Islands. She found it hard to capture the feelings in words of being free, on the open seas, with no responsibilities beyond the immediate moment. She found she was much more comfortable remembering those days than talking about her own experience at the College.

Gath also told her more about the Morranreach. These lands, a loosely confederated line of small hamlets and border keeps, strung out at the edge of the great forest in the upper northwest of the kingdom, at the base of the mountain range which walled off the kingdom from the wilder, sparsely settled lands to the north which were under the control of no king. It had once been the site of the city of Morran, whose ruins the College believed still contained the Book of Ages, the object of their quest. Morran was destroyed in an old war, which predated the King’s strong rule. Gath explained that a Sorcerer had set up a Tower in Morran, in the wild and lawless days before the College of Swords had tightened the practice of Sorcery. This tower had been destroyed in a petty squabble among sorcerers, which had spilled over to destroy the whole city.

No one had ever rebuilt Morran: the King nominally controlled the area, but had no real need for a large northwestern city and the treasury tended to, as the saying in the capital went, “spend south”. Euris’ father could attest to that: the booming trade centered at South Port was the kingdom’s main source of wealth, as raw materials flowed south to the ocean and an incredible variety of goods flowed north to the capital. Her father had attained his lofty station ruling over South Port by facilitating this trade, and greasing its machinery, and the King held him in high regard; her brother, as she told Gath, was being groomed to do the same for the next generation. When the conversation lulled hopelessly, she always had some story of her brother or people she knew at the college getting into all sorts of crazy adventures. If Gath minded these stories, he never showed it, although the few times he asked questions or tried to remember them he was hopelessly befuddled by the parade of people’s names involved and locations in which the stories were set. She found that to be endearing, in a way, but wondered how anyone so inclined to forget details was able to make it as a Sorcerer.

The days wore on as they traveled, and their destination never seemed to be any nearer. But to Euris, this didn’t seem to make any difference. She was happy. She watched the farmlands, copses of trees, low rock walls, cottages, open fields, people, inns, small towns, and everything else that came their way with carefree interest. She knew that she was free, and having the adventure of her life. Wasn’t that what she had been longing for all these years? She was totally on her own. Free. Wasn’t that what being an adult was all about, after all? Not totally on her own: Gath was with her, but he was not like anyone she had ever met. They seemed to be completely different in every way, but totally comfortable together. She had never felt this comfortable with anyone in her life. He seemed to naturally accept her, and she didn’t have to do anything to earn it; she didn’t have to prove she was a good rider, good with a bow, good with a sword, or from a good family. She didn’t have to be beautiful, or strong, or anything. Gath was someone who would treat the King of the World the same as a poor cottager in an outlying farm. Gath seemed to feed off of her sense of freedom, and if his sickness caused him undue weariness, he did not show it. Maybe this was what he had needed all along, Euris thought, to get out of that stuffy tower and live a little. He never seemed the least bit sore after riding for the day, suggesting he had done it a lot before their Quest, and on horseback the travel was easy.

Euris had lost track of the days completely. As the afternoon ran down one day, they came across a little hamlet which Gath identified as Pollar. The significance of this outlying, isolated community had mostly to do with the fact that, according to their map, it was the last human habitation they would see before going into the deep forest in search of the ruins of Morran, which should be a day’s travel beyond it. The place had, otherwise, little enough to commend itself. It was small and dirty. The people had bitter looks on their faces, and gave the two travelers resentful glares. Euris had no idea what would cause them to be so unfriendly. But she had never lived so far on the edge of human civilization, so she realized really didn’t have any appreciation for what went on in their lives. She had lived in one big city, South Port, and then another, the capital, and had liked it that way.

Despite its small size, the hamlet had an inn, which Gath remarked was left over from the days when it was a way station first for travelers going to Morran, and later those going to and from a now-deserted gold mine up in the hills. In a way, Gath seemed surprised that the inn was still in business, and he wondered who traveled here enough to keep the doors open. Euris mentioned it was probably a local watering hole, but questioned its quality. Whether the inn was any good or not, Gath said they should stop for the night, just to get a feel for the area and see what was going on, especially if it was a place they could hear the locals talk. Euris agreed, in a mood to try anything at that moment.

The inn did not have an ostler, but a young lad identifying himself as the proprietor’s son showed them to the stables. Euris preferred to care for her own horse, anyway. Once their horses were settled and fed, the two went into the inn. Euris had seen better. The place was dirty, and dark. A fire burned fitfully in the middle of the large common room, but its light did little to illuminate the corners and booths around the perimeter of the room. A few people sat in clumps, talking in low voices, and eyeing the new travelers in no particularly friendly terms as they walked across the length of the common room to the bar where Euris assumed the proprietor was stationed. She felt the stares of the patrons bore into her back as she approached the bar.

The proprietor was a dirty, fat man wearing a leather apron and a big scowl. He was, wiping a tumbler with a rag so worn and dirty that Euris wondered why he bothered. The man stared at the two blankly as they approached, and stayed silent. Euris paused, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge them.

“We need a room,” Euris said after an uncomfortable moment. She shifted her weight to her other leg.

“How long?” He inquired, putting the tumbler down and leaning one hand on the counter. He met her eyes, and then slid his over to Gath for a second before looking at her again.

“Just tonight. We’ll be moving on in the morning.” The man didn’t say “good”, but he looked to Euris as if he were thinking it.

“Pay me the money up front, then,” the man said in a businesslike way, “one silver piece each, and two coppers if you want dinner.” These prices were exorbitant, and it was hard for Euris not to look startled. She had stayed in a private room in a good inn near South Port for two silver pieces, with dinner included, and that inn was ten times better than this one. She’d seen stables better than this inn. Still, they obviously didn’t get much business here, and she couldn’t complain if the man had to make a living. Especially since they were still spending the Quest-money allocated by the Colleges. High prices were easier to take with someone else’s money.

Euris got the money out of her purse she kept for show. Euris had been traveling enough to have two purses. Her good one had most of her money in it, and was well-hidden. The one she showed to people had only enough money to pay for whatever she immediately needed. The price took almost all of this money, since she had counted out ten coppers and three silver pieces from her treasury, thinking that more than she’d ever need in such a dingy place. She thought wryly to herself that in the morning she had considered not putting this much money in her purse, and now she needed most of it.

The man ignored the four copper coins, but looked at the silver to make sure it was real. In a way, Euris was glad she was spending capital-minted coins from the Treasury of the Colleges, rather than her own coins which would be stamped in South Port, because the locals here had probably never seen any South Port coins and would question them. The man seemed satisfied with the authenticity of the money, and he said perfunctorily: “My girl’ll bring you something to eat, so have a seat. She’ll show you to your room later.” He reached under the counter, and threw a key down for them.

The two sat down, glad to be resting after a hard day of travel. Euris casually remarked at how well the weather was holding up, while they waited for the food. A young girl, perhaps fifteen, with dirty red hair and a freckled face, wearing a threadbare smock and a colorless dress, came over and greeted them with the first smile Euris had yet seen in this town. The girl told them what was available, and the two eagerly accepted the meal. Soon enough, the girl was back with another smile and dinner. The food did not look as bad as Euris was expecting, and she managed to enjoy the meal. Gath, whose appetite had remained strong with all their wearying travel, dug into his meal with gusto, and that reassured Euris.

Euris noticed Gath avoided most of the meat they were served in the inn, in favor of the bread, cheese, and tubers that were the staples in this area. She made sure Gath had a little extra of hers, and finished off his portion of meat. Both of them remarked to one another how much they missed the variety of food available in the capital.

After a while, the girl came to get their plates and clean the table. Euris smiled conspiratorially at her, and took her hand. “Thanks for the great meal,” Euris said. “We feel a lot better now that we’re full!” The girl pulled away her hand, and looked down at what Euris had slipped to her. A full silver piece! The girl’s eyes widened as large as the silver. “Shhh,” Euris whispered, “that’s for you. You don’t have to share it with anyone.”

“Thank you, Miss Knight!” the girl whispered, and secreted the gift on her person.

Gath smiled at Euris when the girl had gone. “What brought that on?”

“I don’t know,” Euris said, looking down at the scarred wood of the table. “Here we are on an adventure, a well-funded one, with full bellies and good clothing and sturdy boots, and here she is with a dress I wouldn’t let the milkmaid at South Port’s keep wear. And she isn’t going to be leaving this,” Euris looked around the room, “place any time soon.”

As she surveyed the room, her eyes noticed that a new person had come in the door. He was tall and powerfully built, and unlike the others in the inn, wore traveling clothes. He also had a sword, and was the first armed person in this town she’d observed. He did not wear a beard, but had a long black moustache whose handlebars descended below his chin. He had a pock-marked face, as if he had survived some horrible disease, and a scar across his forehead. Euris shivered, and looked down before the man could meet her eyes.

Gath had not noticed the newcomer, and he laughed quietly. “I’m sure the College would consider it money well spent.”

“Look at that guy,” Euris whispered to Gath, barely moving her head in the man’s direction, trying not to draw attention. Gath looked up, to see the serving girl go over to the man. She did not smile or talk to him. The man gestured at the meat roasting over the fire, and said something to the girl. Euris saw the girl walk over to the fire to get the meat. The girl glanced up and briefly met Euris’ eyes, and she looked frightened. The girl cut off a generous portion of meat, more than both Euris and Gath had gotten together, and put it on a plate. She took the plate back to the man, and turned away from him as quickly as possible. The man did not look up, but began devouring the meat.

“That’s why I have a Protector,” Gath said in a whisper. “Someone like that would see me by myself and try to start trouble. But with you here, he’ll think twice.” Gath seemed to have sized the man up as a rough customer, if not some kind of outlaw.

“I just hope,” Euris whispered back, “we don’t need to get into trouble. Maybe he’ll leave us alone. All we need is to get into a fight here and have the whole town chase us out.”

Gath said, “I’m more than ready to turn in.” Euris thought it was a good idea, too, so they got up as unobtrusively as possible and headed to the stairs at the back of the common room. As their backs were to him, they didn’t see the man with the moustache look up, nor the hard glint in his eye.

Finding their room was no problem, since the inn only had a few rooms to begin with. The mark on the key, which wasn’t even a number, was on the second door in the upstairs corridor. The serving girl had come up the stairs behind Euris, and while Gath was fumbling to unlock the door, the girl whispered, “Miss Knight, you better watch out for old Brakka. You saw him, the man with the long moustache. He was sizing you up good earlier.”

“Thank you,” Euris said to her. “We most certainly will watch for him.” She patted her sword hilt in case the girl had not grasped the concept that the two were not afraid. A little bravado never hurt, especially if a reputation avoided an unnecessary fight.

“Brakka’s a troublemaker,” the girl said, “killed Colad the miner last winter in a fight over nothing.” That figured. A shrewd judge of character was not required for the likes of this man.

Gath had opened the door, but did not go in. He said to the serving girl, “Maybe someone ought to tell Brakka to watch out for us.” Gath either picked up on her bravado, or was trying to plant his own seed. As Armsmaster Fallir always told them, Euris remembered, the best fights were the ones that never happened because the instigator was afraid to start them.

“Brakka has a gang,” the girl said, looking up and down the corridor nervously. This last piece of news must have used up her nerve, for she nervously disappeared back down the stairs.

Gath smiled. “This is exactly why I have a Protector.”

Euris laughed. “I have my doubts that Brakka would be brave enough to mess with us,” she said as they went into the room.

Gath replied, “Precisely. I’d use up all my magic incinerating him and his gang,” he said the word derisively, “but with you, they’ll think twice.”

The next morning, they got up stiff from the worn out mattress, and had a cold bite to eat in the inn’s deserted common room. The serving girl was the only person they saw, and she thanked Euris profusely for the silver coin, and once more warned them to watch out for Brakka. Euris assured her that they would be wary. Euris had her hand on her sword hilt as they walked out to the stable, and kept her eyes out. They rode their horses out into the town’s dirt street, and headed off. Euris rode with her hands loose and her eyes looking around. Gath seemed less concerned, but Euris did not know what undetectable magical searching he was doing. They rode along the trail for two hours, passing outlying farm houses and fields, before coming to a more wooded area as the land rose into low hills.

“Now here’s where I’d ambush someone,” Gath said, pointing to a place where the northern trail plunged into a copse of dense pine trees. The trail seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness. Euris agreed with him. But Gath continued: “Yet there’s no one in there that I can tell.” Gath’s magical abilities, Euris had discovered, allowed him to sense people within a mile or two of him.

Magic or not, Euris nervously loosened her sword and kept her sword hand on the hilt as they rode into the darkness. When her eyes had adjusted, she looked all around, but as surely as Gath had said, there was no one. For some reason she was even more nervous. She’d rather have a good, plain ambush they could walk into in full awareness, and deal with Brakka’s gang once and for all. On horseback, with her trained charger, she wasn’t afraid of fighting even four or five outlaws with no ability to fight in anything more than bar brawls.

Nervously, and still looking around, Euris tried to lighten up their mood with a humorous episode. “Did I tell you about the time Arethin took us to the River Inn?”

“No,” Gath said, still scanning the path ahead.

“One night, after we’d become seniors, he took us down there to meet an old friend of his. This guy was a complete and total drunk, and when he was deep into his cups, he decided to assault an off-duty King’s Guardsman. We were laughing our heads off, until this so-called friend says he’s with us. The Guardsman came over and asked us who we were, and we said we were students. Of course, we weren’t dressed in our uniforms or anything, and we were hardly as sober as we needed to be, and the Guardsman didn’t believe us. I didn’t want to start a fight, and get into trouble; and we couldn’t really escape, because the Night Watch had just come in and this off-duty guy waves them over. No one would believe we were seniors at the college, and they thought we were troublemakers. The long and short of it is, we spent the night in the lockup.”

“You did?” Gath sounded amazed, and gave her a look.

“Truly,” Euris laughed. “Then the next day, Armsmaster Fallir was called down to see if we were who we said we were. He got us out, but sternly told us in no uncertain terms that if we were ever put in jail again, we ought to at least put up a fight!” Gath doubled over in his saddle laughing.

The rest of the day was easier, since the threat of ambush faded. Both of them figured if they were going to be jumped, they’d have been jumped at the first opportunity. It was hard to impute to such an obvious outlaw any sense of subtlety, and Euris certainly wasn’t afraid of him.

By the time nightfall came, they were in the outskirts of the ruins of Morran. They camped for the night in a small clearing that was of extreme interest to Gath. The light was failing, and they were both tired, so Gath decided to wait for the morning to begin an exploration of the area. They set up camp and had a bite to eat, and retired early.

Euris had the last watch of the night, and alternated watching Gath sleep and staring up at the stars. She wondered if he watched her while she was asleep. Finally, the sun began its rise and a dim light filled the clearing. Euris got up and stretched, and then picked up her sword belt from beside her bedroll and buckled it on. She poked up the fire and began laying out breakfast. Gath rolled over, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “No sign of that man with the moustache, anyway,” she told Gath, who was slowly getting up and yawning.

“Don’t be too quick to write him off,” Gath said, “you never know what someone like that has in mind. But we have bigger things to do today than worry about him.” Euris scanned the trees around the clearing again, slightly more uneasy, wondering who was out there.

After they ate, Gath began poking around the mounds in the clearing, examining each one and sometimes pulling away the kudzu vines which covered all of the rubble. “This is it,” Gath eventually said, although Euris had trouble understanding the difference between one kudzu-covered mound and another. Gath did sound quite certain, however, so she took him at his word. It was only mid-morning, so they had plenty of time left in the day.

Using a pick he retrieved from his saddle, where it had been strapped on tightly, Gath swung at the kudzu creepers which covered the entrance, pulling them away from what they covered. He made extremely slow progress, and seemed quite winded after a few swings.

“Here,” Euris said, grabbing the pick from him. In a few whacks, she had cleared off the entrance to below ground. A large wooden door lay under the creepers, and she muscled it open, to the protests of its rusted hinges. Below was a gaping black hole, leading down into who knew where.

“Where does this lead?” Euris asked, not sure if she wanted to go down into the cellar. She peered into it, but could see nothing beyond the first ten steps or so.

Gath looked down into the cellar himself. “If what we know about this city is correct, this is a cellar that goes into the underground storage areas. From it, we should be able to find the corridors that go to the archives. Let me go first, since I’ll have the light.”

They descended into the cellar. As they went down, Euris noticed Gath carrying a long walking stick almost as tall as she was. She couldn’t imagine where it came from, since it was too large to fit under his robes, and it was not tied to his saddle. Gath said something she couldn’t quite hear, and a ball of pure light formed above it. The light was not the harsh yellow-orange of a torch, or the milder yellow of a lantern, but a bluish-white that never flickered. It cast a wide glow upon everything in sight.

On to ... Chapter Four: Ruins