Two days later they reached the outskirts of the Royal City of Rithmar, leaving isolation behind and rejoining the world once more.
The enchanters and their guests fell in behind a group of men travelling to the capital from outlying villages: men dressed in travel-stained leathers, with hard-faces. Some had swords at their sides, others had axes slung onto their backs, while still others carried ash spears.
Dain, who walked near the front of the group, cast Asher a questioning look.
“The king is rallying fighting men,” the enchanter replied. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Anthor and Thûn are at war.”
Dain nodded. “We heard in Idriss. Have you had any news from the south?”
Asher’s grey eyes clouded. “Aye—none of it good. Anthor gains the advantage. It appears their king has been planning this campaign a long while.”
Dain stiffened at this news and glanced back over his shoulder at where Saul walked next to Lilia. The pair of them were talking, their voices too low for him to make out the conversation. He wondered what Asher’s reaction would be if he knew Reoul of Anthor’s youngest son walked amongst them.
They followed the men bound east. The gravel road curved north for a spell, following the edge of a mountain that rose like the prow of a great ship from a sea of green hills. The Eastern Road skirted the mountain and entered a wooded vale. Spruce and fir carpeted the hillsides, filling the cool air with their sharp scent. The road ran alongside a swiftly flowing river. The sound of running water and birdsong filled the vale.
Soon they came across tended fields, paddocks where goats and sheep grazed, and clusters of timber cottages. The shadows were lengthening and workers trekked back to their homes after a day in the fields. Scythes, spades and hoes in hand, they paid little attention to the trickle of travelers on the road.
As he walked, Dain noted that many of the cottars’ dwellings were damaged; doors and shutters hung off hinges, and some had their roofs caved in. Those farmers who had finished work for the day, followed the other travelers into the city. Clearly, it was not safe to remain beyond the walls after dark.
Turning his attention east once more, Dain’s gaze followed the river to its source. There, barely a league ahead, lay their destination. He caught his breath at the sight of it.
Ryana appeared at Dain’s left shoulder, taking in the city she had not seen in a decade. She’d said little since meeting up with the enchanters, and kept to herself in the evenings, her mood subdued. Yet he saw emotion flicker in her eyes now.
Looking upon the city before him, Dain shared her awe.
The Royal City of Rithmar was famed throughout Serran for its beauty, but Dain had thought those tales exaggerated. Folk called it ‘the jewel of the four kingdoms’—and he finally understood why.
A glittering citadel sat at the end of the vale, nestled between two canine-shaped peaks. Surrounded by dark forest and rushing waterfalls, the city climbed the mountainside in many levels. Walls of gleaming white stone encircled each tier. Although dusk was still some way off, fires burned atop the walls and from watchtowers. At its crown rose a great tower, with a gilded turret.
The Tower of the North was an impressive sight. Dain had heard that the Kingdom of Farras housed this tower’s twin far to the south. He suddenly felt very far from his parents’ inn in Port Needle, and the sleepy Isle of Orin.
He glanced back at Ryana. Tearing her gaze from the citadel, she smiled, although the expression was brittle.
“I never thought to set eyes on this city again.”
To Dain’s right, Asher huffed a bitter laugh. “Welcome home.”
Lilia walked alongside Saul and entered the gates of the capital.
A great wall of iron and wood—at least twenty feet high—formed a stark barrier before the lower town. Beyond, a tightly-packed township of stone houses stretched out alongside the banks of the River Rith, greeting the travelers as they drew closer. Most of the buildings facing the road were workshops. Jewelers, weapon smiths, iron-mongers, carpenters and tailors all squeezed in—hoping to gain trade from one of the many folk who journeyed in and out of the capital every day.
One glance at her surroundings and Lilia knew this city was far richer than Idriss. The port city was big and rough, but the Royal City of Rithmar was on another scale entirely. It both intimidated and amazed her. She craned her neck up at the white city above and felt her skin prickle.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
She glanced across at Saul and found him watching her.
“More beautiful even than Mirrar Rock?” she asked.
“Anthor’s capital is impressive,” Saul admitted, “but this city outshines her. Mirrar Rock is built on a base of obsidian and surrounded by extinct volcanoes. It’s austere, all gleaming edges and sharp angles. Not like this citadel—its walls glow as if lit from some light within.”
Despite herself, Lilia felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She hadn’t realized Saul was a poet. Yet he was right, the Royal City had an ethereal quality.
They followed the enchanters to the gates of the citadel, and waited to be let inside. There was a long queue and it moved slowly. Lilia grew impatient, glancing a few yards ahead where Dain waited with Asher and Ryana.
Dain looked tired, his clothes travel-stained, his shaggy hair mussed and dirty. It had been days since any of them had been able to bathe properly, and Lilia knew she didn’t look, or smell, any cleaner than her companions.
Beside Dain, Ryana looked bone-weary, yet her stance was tense, her gaze watchful.
The sun was setting across the vale when they entered the citadel at last. The guards at the gate didn’t question them as they went through with the group of enchanters. However, they had barely gone a few yards across the wide cobbled square beyond when a young woman approached them. She ran across the square, her pale, floss-like hair flying like a flag behind her.
The girl was dressed in a smoke-grey robe, marking her as an Enchanter of the Light; although her clothing was not travel-stained like the robes of those who had just entered the city.
“Asher!’ She rushed up to the enchanter, her eyes huge on her thin face. “You were due back days ago—we thought something had happened to you all.”
The blond man cast her a weary smile. “Greetings, Rina. We travelled farther west than planned, and just as well we did.” He gestured to the group standing behind him. “These four needed saving.”
Rina’s gaze swept over the faces of the newcomers before it shifted back to Asher. Lilia noted the way she stared at him, the thinly veiled adoration in her eyes. It appeared Asher had an admirer.
“It’s just as well you’re back,” she breathed. “We have barely enough enchanters to cover the walls tonight. More people have been maimed by shadow creatures. The Hall of Healing is filled with injured, but there are none of the Light to tend them. Some are in a bad state—they need your help.”
Asher heaved a sigh, irritation flashing across his features. “I’ve been walking since daybreak, Rina—isn’t there anyone else?
She shook her head. “Most of the enchanters are at the wall.”
Asher turned to the group following him. “Come, we’ll make a stop at the Hall before you meet the High Enchanter.”
Without another word, Asher set off up the hill. Lilia fell in with the group following, her own legs protesting at the steep climb.
The main road, The King’s Way, corkscrewed up the glittering cone of the citadel, but by the time they reached the top of the first level, Lilia was struggling to keep up with the others.
Around her, firelight glowed from behind shuttered windows and the voices of men, women and children echoed out into the empty street as folk prepared their suppers. It was almost dark now; most folk were safely indoors. Lamps filled with tallow lit the cobbled expanse before them.
It took them a while to climb half-way up the citadel, but eventually they arrived at a great stone fortress. Solid, flat roofed and lined with battlements, the House of Light and Darkness was not what Lilia had expected. It was the ugliest building she had seen so far inside the city. It looked like military barracks.
Three oaken doors greeted them. The central door was the largest, leading into the fortress itself. A door knocker hung in its center—the face of a great horned stag holding a heavy iron ring in its mouth.
The two doors flanking it led into wings that sloped down from the main structure. They had markings inscribed into the grey stone above them: a dark eight-pointed star on the left and the outline of a star to the right.
Asher led them to the door marked by the outlined star, threw it open and marched inside.
Lilia hung back, letting the Enchanters of the Light follow him indoors. Then she exchanged a look with Ryana who had also hesitated at the entrance. “What should we do?”
Ryana sighed, her gaze flicking to where Saul and Dain stood behind Lilia, awaiting her answer. “Asher will take us to the High Enchanter soon enough,” she replied. “Come, we might as well see if we can make ourselves useful here first.”
The Hall of Healing was a long, narrow structure lined with straw-filled pallets on both sides with an aisle through the center. Oil filled cressets burned along the pitted-stone walls, casting a golden hue over the gaunt, ashen faces of the folk laid-up here.
The hall was full. The injured filled the pallets, some sitting up with arms or legs bandaged, while others lay worryingly still, covered by blankets. One or two of the pallets had been curtained off, as if the injuries that lay within were too grave for the others to see.
Lilia breathed in the metallic odor of blood, laced with something else—something resinous and pungent, like pine sap but much stronger.
She screwed up her nose, glancing at Ryana. “What’s that smell?”
“Eld Oil,” Ryana replied. “It comes from the sap of a tree that only grows in the Rithmar Highlands.”
“We use it in Anthor as well,” Saul added from behind the women, “although it’s costly. This smell reminds me of the back-alleys of Mirrar Rock.”
Lilia glanced back at him, frowning. “Why?”
“The oil dulls pain,” he replied, “but take it for more than a day or two and you become a slave to it. Eld is the vice of the wealthy—at least in Anthor—I’ve seen many a nobleman’s son brought low by it.”
Ryana nodded. “It’s no different here—but used properly it takes away suffering and speeds healing.”
Lilia watched the Enchanters of the Light who had entered just before them, get to work. They washed their hands in basins near the door, before picking up baskets overflowing with bandages, vials and clay bottles, and hurrying to attend the injured.
Asher led them. Lilia observed him, fascinated by the man’s cool confidence, the way he knew exactly what needed to be done, and by whom.
Ryana stepped forward. “Can I help?”
Asher, who had stopped by the pallet of a man with a grievous slash-wound to his left thigh, glanced up. “Get me some boiling water and fresh linen.”
Ryana did as bid, while Asher inspected the wound, his gaze dispassionate. “It’s started to fester,” he announced.
The man, a burly fellow who looked like a cottar, groaned. “They broke into our cottage,” he moaned. “Slew my wife and carried my daughter off.”
Lilia stifled a gasp, understanding now the look of desolation on the man’s face. He did not appear to care if he lived or died. Asher didn’t answer the man; his attention wholly focused on the task at hand.
Ryana brought the hot water and cloths as asked. She then sat down next to the man, as Asher started to clean his wounds. The farmer’s yell of agony echoed down the hall, and he began to thrash. Ryana tried to hold him still but he flung up a meaty arm, and knocked her off her low stool. Picking herself up, she beckoned to Saul and Dain. “I need your help.”
It took all three of them to hold the man down, while Asher washed out the deep wound, clearing out the pus that had begun to ooze from it. Looking on, Lilia started to feel slightly ill. She wished there was something she could do to help.
Once Asher had cleaned the pus away, he produced a clay bottle from the basket next to him, removing the wooden stopper. The resinous scent of Eld wafted toward Lilia, making her eyes water. She watched as Asher poured a few drops onto the open wound.
Then, he began to gather the Light.
Asher had strong hands with long, elegant fingers, and he moved his right hand in a circle over the cottar’s wounded thigh, murmuring words of the Ancient Tongue under his breath as he did so.
The flickering cressets nearby began to dance. A moment later, the cresset nearest flared, a bolus of flame spinning forth into the air above their heads. Asher stretched out his right hand, turning it over so that the outline of the eight-pointed star tattooed upon his palm was exposed.
The ball of fire dropped into his palm, emitting a flash of light that made all those near him avert their gazes.
When Lilia looked back, she saw his star tattoo now glowed gold.
Asher turned his palm over and swept it down the gash, just a few inches from the raw flesh.
Lilia watched, her breath catching, as the wound healed before her eyes.
It took a few sweeps, but each time Asher passed his hand over the gash, it looked better. By the fifth sweep, the glow from Asher’s palm had extinguished, and a thick crusted scab now covered the man’s thigh, where a deep open wound had been just moments earlier.
Dain muttered an oath under his breath. Lilia had to agree with him. She too had never witnessed such a transformation. Asher’s calmness also impressed her; although his bedside manner was perfunctory, bordering on cold. Perhaps his lack of warmth toward his patient was due to exhaustion, she reasoned.
“There you are.” A deep male voice echoed down the hall. “Rina told me you’d returned.”
Asher exhaled deeply and straightened up, his gaze shifting past Ryana and Lilia, to the open door behind them.
Lilia saw Ryana’s shoulders tense. Alarm flickered in Asher’s grey eyes for a heartbeat before his expression smoothed.
“Thrindul,” he said, rising to his feet. “I was on my way to see you—but there were things I had to deal with here first.”
Lilia swiveled, following the direction of Asher’s gaze to where a man stood in front of the entrance. Tall, broad shouldered and built like a warrior, he wore the same style robes as the other enchanters, only this one was snowy white. The man carried an intricately carved staff, topped with the head of a roaring stag. He had blue eyes and long dark hair, streaked with grey and a face that would have been handsome, if it had not been so hard.
The man stepped forward. “Rina tells me you saved a group of travelers on the road—is this them?”
“Aye,” Asher replied, his tone subdued. “Thrindul, I …”
The words Asher was about to say next died in his throat, as Ryana turned to face the newcomer.
The High Enchanter’s gaze met hers, and his strong face drained of color.
“You.”