Page 81 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“Is that like a king?” Wistala asked, using the only human title she knew other than Dragonblade.

“It may as well be, for Hypatia has no more knights to send to keep his ambitions in check in these dark days.

“I must teach you Parl, the Hypatian vernacular, so that you might climb up one of my chimneys and listen. Though you’d fall asleep at their discourse and drop down the chimney like Old King Yule himself. And your appearance would bring no Solstice merrymaking.”

“Correct me if I err. Hypatia is all the lands between the Inland Ocean and the mountains?”

“Once it was much more. It ringed all the Inland Ocean like a necklace. But the necklace’s caretakers let it fragment, and others have grasped at the loosened jewels. Most are gone now, and even the chain is breaking. Once you were a Citizen of Hypatia first, and only a man, elf, or dwarf second. But tribalism has taken over since then, between the conniving Wheel of Fire and that madman Praskall howling up his humanist mobs in the Varvar lands. I fear I’ll live to see the last few jewels of Hypatia torn and stolen.”

“Is Mossbell a jewel?”

“Nothing so grand. But Mossbell does have charge of a link in that precious chain. Tomorrow I’ll show you.”

The next day Rainfall put a light sort of woven saddle on the irascible horse—Avalanche was his name, and a stallion still, she learned as Rainfall spoke to him—and rode out with Wistala trailing along. First he cantered the horse a few times around the buildings to warm him and take the edge off. Only after this would Avalanche walk down the cobblestones to the Road.

The Road impressed Wistala, once it had been explained to her. Fully wide enough for two carts to pass and space for outriders beside, it was raised up and paved with fine stones, smashed so as to give them teeth that allowed wheels and horseshoes to grip, keeping mud down and dry surface against wheel, boot, or sandal. Or so Rainfall said.

“In my grandfather’s time, fully six hundred and forty years ago, he’d done his duty to waxing Hypatia in the Battle of the Sword-grass to the south. His skill in battle won him much renown. As a reward, the Imperial Directory awarded him this estate and charged him with keeping the roads and the bridge. He named it Mossbell for an ancient gong he found at the site of the old ferry. A light duty, one would think.”

“Bridge?”

“We’re coming to it shortly. Happily, it’s the cause of our meeting.”

The trees grew close about the road here, and it seemed little traveled. Rainfall continually watched and listened to the west side of the road. “If you hear a crashing, or deep and whistling breathing from these woods, hide yourself as best you can.”

“Is there something to fear?”

“Rarely in the daylight. There’s a pestilence dwelling on the banks of the river south of here in the form of a troll.”

Wistala wasn’t sure what a troll was, other than that they were more ravenous than a brood of hungry hatchlings.

Rainfall continued: “None dare settle flock or cot here. Much of my grandfather’s estate is now the troll’s stomping ground. Once many sheep and cattle, even horses, were raised here, along with the best four-season trail oxen in the northlands, if you’ll forgive my pride.”

“Is there no way to be rid of the troll?”

At this, her host blinked and set his mouth, as if barring a gate to keep the words in. “It’s been tried.”

They arrived at the bridge, and Wistala stood still in wonder until her eyes could comprehend it.

The gorge here yawned far wider if a bit less high than around Father’s retreat, still so steep-sided that a hominid could climb it only with a careful choice of path and much use of hands. Naked rocks and broken timber filled the river, flowing hard but without the bank-to-bank froth.

The bridge crossed the river in four arching leaps, columns of shaped and angled stone like towers bearing the road. There had once been a fifth arch in the center, but it had fallen and been replaced by wooden planking under an arch of its own. A stout stone bridge house stood at the Mossbell end. Wistala would hardly have noticed it, except that Rainfall slipped from the horse and went to the door.

“I was attending to the lock here when I saw you. Oddest thing I ever saw, a condor was circling close over you, but not stopping to eat. You were just there,” he said, pointing to a black length of shattered timber sticking out into the river, “lying atop that grandfather bole. Even at the end of your strength, you managed to pull yourself out of the river. I had to pry your tail from one of the knots.”

“What did the condor do?”

“Flew off mountainways.”

“You climbed all the way down there to inspect a half-drowned drakka?”

“And more. I used my balagan to get you up.”

“What is a balagan?”

“A device for lifting things, using ropes and blocks. Another word for it is crane. It allows one to lift the weight of three.”

“Whyever would you trouble yourself?”

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