Journal of Hadriax el Fex

I have returned from a bloody campaign to the north. I am tired of the fighting. How many years has it been? I’ve nearly forgotten. We of Arcosia are a long-lived race, and this has allowed us to keep fighting as though in our prime, while a clansman might be born, live to old age, and die while we barely age.

We decimated many villages on our campaign. I can no longer differentiate one village from another, one herd of slaves taken from another, or the faces of those I’ve killed. Men, women, children. Children, Alessandros says, are the future breeders of our enemy, so usually they are slaughtered unless someone desires them for slaves.

In the small country of Kmaern, Alessandros used the Black Star to wipe out its people, and to topple most of their impressive stone towers. These folk were the stoneworkers who built defenses for the clans our forces could not penetrate. They will build nothing more.

Since our troops have not been replenished by Arcosia, we’ve begun to use our captives as arrow fodder, and we discovered a people deep in the Wanda Plains—more like cattle they are, for they are dim-witted and bestial, and live in dens of mud and dirt. Mornhavon has been capturing them and changing them with his powers. Once changed, they are cunning and ferocious fighters.

The Sons of Rhove have allied themselves with the clans, for they fear invasion of their own lands. And, there are indications that the Elt in the lands north of clan territories are interested in joining the fray against us. Alessandros is confident he will overcome them as he overcame Argenthyne.

I cannot help but think that all the unholy works of Alessandros have changed him. I cannot explain it, but he is ever darker in his thoughts, as though the more he uses etherea for his experiments and plots, the more it pollutes and poisons him. Many stay loyal out of fear, though there are others who revel in his change, and feed off it.

I try not to think too heavily on it, but the perversion of etherea, which is the stuff of God, is madness. Perhaps that is the taint I sense.

WATCH HILL

The town of Childrey lay a half day’s ride east of Sacor City. Because of Karigan’s late start, she’d probably spend the night in Childrey, or beneath the stars somewhere along the road on her return trip.

As she had guessed, Condor was just as eager as she to take to the road, and as he stretched his legs in a soothing, rocking canter, her concerns flowed from her shoulders with the passing of each mile, leaving her in a state of contentment.

It was a truly fine day with a sky overhead the shade of a robin’s egg. Woodlands alternated with blueberry barrens, and she waved to laborers raking in the last of the season’s crop. They shouted back cheery greetings.

There were a couple of villages she and Condor passed through, with children watching from the side of the road to see the king’s messenger. More merry greetings were exchanged, and she was asked to pass on good tidings to King Zachary.

Once outside the second village, she nudged Condor back into his pleasant canter, and with a switch of his tail, they were off.

Feeling cleansed and revitalized, Karigan laughed at the breeze against her face and the wide open freedom of the ride. It had been truly too long since she’d been off castle grounds. Now she drank in the deep greens of grasses and forest, and the wavering yellow and white flowers of late summer along the road. Some plants, spent by so much summer splendor, were already turned gold and red with the shortening days.

Later, when she slowed Condor to a walk to cool off, a rocky mount called Watch Hill rose above the trees. From a distance it often took on a bluish aspect, especially at sunset. Blueberry barrens left to grow wild long ago cloaked its slopes. Its summit was bald granite except for scraggly vegetation that clung tenaciously in protected crevices and pockets of gravelly soil.

The road skirted the base of Watch Hill, and then continued steadily eastward. As she passed into the hill’s shadow, she felt a strange tug on her brooch, a resonance that called on her to climb the mount. Spooked, Karigan kicked Condor into a canter to put Watch Hill behind them. She wasn’t about to let anything untoward spoil her pleasant ride.

The shadows had grown long by the time Condor’s hooves pounded over the bridge that crossed the brook bounding Childrey.

Childrey was a prosperous little town, home to several gentlemen farmers and landowners. Some profited from the lumbering business that took place north and west, while others were merchants who specialized in crossing the Wingsong Mountains to do business with the eastern provinces.

Upon her arrival at the mayoral offices off the town green, she was treated courteously by the mayor’s servants. This was her third errand to Childrey, and Lord-Mayor Gilbradney was an ardent supporter of King Zachary.

The mayor and his staff offered her every creature comfort possible, and she was not at all disappointed when he invited her to his table for a supper of wine-roasted grouse and bowls piled high with the mushrooms that were so plentiful this time of year. There were slabs of sharp cheese, and bread just pulled from the ovens. Her cup was never empty of apple wine, and dish after dish was passed her way.

It was over a heap of blueberry-rhubarb pie swimming in warm clotted cream that Lord-Mayor Gilbradney broached a subject that was not just simple table conversation.

“Rider,” he said, “one hears all manner of strange tales emanating from across the country. As you know, we’ve a good deal of commerce here for an inland town.” Here he smiled knowing her own family’s business based on the shore of Corsa Harbor. “With our commerce, there are those who have traveled far and wide. Do you know the tales I speak of?”