Chapter 76: Into the Moonlit Mountain Pass

"Doing alright back here, Arthur?" Garris asked, smiling respectfully as he offered his tired but earnest face to his passenger. ’We’re making fair time, but it’ll take nearly all of the next day and night to reach the city on the next province.’

Shadow One tilted his head.

He nodded slowly.

Garris tapped the edge of the wooden railing, his fingers brushing the worn wood before hauling himself down from the wagon. "Right! Reform the line." He called out.

Once again the caravan picked up, the wheels creaking and groaning as the horses climbed over the uneven road.

And so the mountains rose ahead of them, hills that had taken years to form, hills that now began narrowing the dirt road.

"We’ll reach the lower passes of the mountains soon," Garris warned, "And that’s when it gets rough."

He paused, his face suddenly tightening into a firm, grim expression.

"Keep your senses sharp."

Shadow One gave a brief single nod. His lips remained sealed.

Garris figured it was best to allow him time. After years of working with wagons he understood the type that preferred silence.

Men that could carry a wagon on their own.

He offered the wooden railing one more brief pat before turning and climbing onto the second wagon,

"Alright! Reform the line!" he announced.

As mid afternoon approached the land around Valen changed from the patchwork quilt of meadows and hills that it had been for days.

Rolling hills covered in wild shrubs and tall, waving grasses stretched towards the horizon where the dark sea of pine trees that formed the vast forest in the valleys between the mountains began to rise into view.

Massive, towering trees, the kind that put their roots deep into the earth formed walls of dark green towering over the pines.

As the wagon rose into the mountains the afternoon light began to fail, the trees blotting out the sun and changing the warm afternoon glow to a green tinged twilight.

Even the air grew colder as the caravan climbed.

Then even the road itself began to change.

The dirt road narrowed and twisted along the mountainside.

Massive rock walls shot up on either side, rising hundreds of feet in some places into a sky thick with evening clouds. On the opposite side of the road the land fell steeply away into wide terraces of roiling fog.

All at once the horses began to fidget.

Even the guards seemed tense.

A cold dampness crept along the pass, a mineral rich chill thick in the air as the mountain night began to fall.

As dusk settled the last of the evening sun sank behind the sharp lines of the distant peaks

Darkness swallowed the mountain road as the wagons and their horses shivered in the cooling evening air.

Garris called for a halt, asking the guards to dismount for just a few moments, long enough to mount the lanterns.

Massive iron lanterns were then secured to the corners of each wagon and as the last of the sun’s light vanished behind the ridgelines a golden glow spread across the mountain road in great pools illuminating only a small portion of what lay beyond the swaying glow.

Even less was visible in the inky blackness on the other side.

Something was watching the caravan and from its home in the deep shadows of the mountain pass the time seemed close enough for it to move.

As the last wisp of cloud was cleared away from the ink dark sky the landmark of the twin moons above Velmosphere began its nightly visit over the mountain peaks.

High above the ridges and distant peaks the twin purple moons hovered, side by side, just close enough for the dark amethyst light to spill over the mountain pass.

Their glow drifted down through the pines casting even the mountain itself as well as the wobbling horses tethered beside the road in unnatural purple hues casting long shadows.

It all took on a dreamlike haze, a surrealistic hush that made everything seem more wonder then threat.

The mountain pass narrowed more as the caravan climbed with the steady rhythmic thudding of the horse’s hooves beating on either stone or packed dirt road adding to the deep creak of the old wagon wheels. With every turn of the wheel thick iron chains, those that held the cars together, swayed and groaned as the carriages’ rough roads made the metal links ring in defiance.

Then, somewhere beyond the distant ridge tops a long low howl came drifting down the mountain pass from the unseen depths of the forest.

Slow, lingering and sad, the haunting call floated along the air, vanishing into the ever thickening night.

A tense silence settled over the guards.

For the longer it took as the caravan rode along the narrower mountain road that wound between towering rock walls the more they became aware of the dangers that pressed close on either side.

Men kept their hands close to their weapons, some brushing the leathers of their swords while others tested the tension on their crossbow strings.

Eyes stayed roving, watching the underbrush and strange shadows that bled between the pine trees.

As night took command the forest grew thick with animals.

During the day creatures of the earth remained hidden save for the occasional bird’s cry that echoed through the trees.

But as night took the land those things that fed on night took to the hunt.

Even more unnerving perhaps, the strange purple haze that bathed the road and mountain in amethyst light made even the bravest of men uneasy.

There were nights when only the pale, almost silver light of the twin moons kept a man from losing grip of his common sense.

Shadow One remained still as the wagons rumbled back and forth with the swaying wooden boards. He was not yet ready to open his eyes.

Not yet, but even now already his spiritual awareness stretched far out and away from the narrow confines of the wagon’s sides.

Moving like a silent ghost, his vast consciousness flowing over the landscape with a touch so fine that not a single rodent burrowing in the roots of a tree was beyond his senses.

Even the trees themselves felt the slow, methodical probing of his awareness shifting from shadow to shadow along a thin stretch of the forest.

Still deeper it moved, beyond the thin pine woods into rocky ravines that stretched out into the road and past, flowing out from the narrow mountain path into the valley below.

All of this he observed, all felt as he moved from shadow to shadow with the ebb and flow of the spirit air.

Even the animals in the distance, the slow steady movements of creatures prowling the mountain in the night did not escape him, nor did the mountain wind that slithered between the rock walls.

Nothing was out of reach, nothing beyond the feel of his conscious touch.

And yet, even with all this Shadow One remained perfectly still, a silent watcher within the moving caravan.

As the guards outside the wagon grew tense, as they tightened their grips on the hilts of their weapons and scanned the distance with anxious eyes, even as they caught every suspicious rustling that could be seen within the pine shadows, he had already seen far and farther beyond.

Every animal movement and shadowy shape, every noise that a lurking form might make on the road along with the cool air drifting between the mountain walls all became part of him, no sense felt that was not familiar to him.

The guards did not know that there was nothing for them to sense, nothing for the men of Valen to fret and worry over.

As they rode blindly into ever increasing darkness under the strange amethyst glow of the twin moons, they were unaware that the very same awareness that watched them was seeing every creeping shadow along the road and yet none of those things were what he searched for.

Even more important, nothing approached the caravan without first being seen by him.