Guild Mage: Apprentice [Volume One Stubbed] 167. Al’Fenthia

Al’Fenthia blood at the northern end of the high pass between Lucania and Elden lands, surrounded by mountains to either side. To the east was a great green valley, and Liv could tell even from a distance that it contained a rift. The mana boiling out over the mountain slopes was wild, surging with the power that spoke of an active eruption.

There were camps at the edges of the valley, with trails of smoke rising from the cook-fires of Elden warriors. Liv assud they were culling the rift: even from this great height, so of the mana beasts were massive enough to see - including one bear nearly the size of a house - or had broken trails through the underbrush and uprooted trees.

To the north were the last of the mountains, and then rolling foothills descending to a vast, misty forest, still green in the winter. It stretched on as far as Liv could see, at the base of the mountain chain that cut east to west, dividing the lands of the Eld from Lucania. Sowhere to the north, she knew, the forest would end, and beyond that was only ice.

Soaring above, Liv couldn’t help but wonder what Freeport might look like from such a height, or even the neighborhoods that surrounded Akela Kila in Lendh ka Dakruim. She couldn’t see individual people, but beneath towering red trees, capped by needles green even in winter, the roads looked like rivers that joined and split from each other ti and again.

The walls of the city were obvious, as well, great masses of stone that looked like they’d been pulled up from the very bones of the world. One cut off the north end of the pass, with a single great gate through which trading and comrce could be conducted overland. Liv had spent so long travelling by waystone now that she could hardly imagine spending months driving cattle across the land, or carting goods by wagon. Still, for the average person, the mana required to activate a waystone was just as far out of reach as the clouds in the sky. Such travel was for mages and nobles.

Beyond the first wall and gate was the trading quarter of the city, and the buildings there were built in a combination of styles. More recent Lucanian trading houses were of red brick, like the royal palace in Freeport, while the older ones were of rougher stone that would match Castle Whitehilll. There was a single cluster of buildings that reminded Liv of Arjun’s holand, which was a surprise: she hadn’t realized any Dakruiman traders ever made their way so far north.

The other buildings were clearly built by the Eld, favoring foundations of gray mountain stone. At the corner of each building were great, living trees that served as beams, with the walls stretched between their red trunks. Capped by clusters of green needles, like so enormous forest mushroom, the trees reminded Liv how Airis ka Reimis had used his magic in the mayor’s garden at Whitehill, controlling roots with a single word of power.

Past the foreign quarter, and the wall of stone that set it apart, the rest of the city was even stranger to Lucanian eyes. It looked almost like a forest, or carefully manicured park, with the streets winding between great groves of mature trees taller and thicker than anything Liv had ever seen in her life. Here, houses were built in the heights, and the city-grove made the beam-trees of the trading district look like saplings. Great platforms stretched out, supported by wooden braces, and surrounded the trunks, complete with walls, windows, and roofs. Everything looked not so much constructed as grown into place.

“What was their word again?” Rose shouted in Liv’s ear, struggling to be heard over the wind.

“Cer,” Liv answered. “To grow.” She circled the gyrfalcons once over the city, looking down until she found the waystone. It was massive, even larger than the one at Freeport, and for a mont she wondered just what the Vædim had needed to move from this place in such an enormous bulk.

What she found more interesting, however, was that the waystone was surrounded by an ard camp - not of Lucanian soldiers, which had been her fear, but Elden warriors. There were tents, campfires, horse lines, and all the apparatus of an army. Off to one side, where the Lucanian-looking buildings were, she finally found what she’d been looking for: Benedict’s new army, at least a hundred of them, in their own tents.

“Whatever is happening here, it isn’t what I expected,” Liv said. She steered the conjured gyrfalcons down in a tight spiral, descending to the northern gates of the city. Here, the defensive walls did not look toward Lucanian lands in the south, but toward the north country of the Eld, which spread out in all directions once the high pass was left behind.

Liv landed the bird-constructs before the gate, which looked to have been made of the red wood from the trunks of the sa sort of trees that grew in the heart of the city. Elden warriors on the stone ramparts were a swirl of activity, and by the ti Liv and her friends had climbed down, she could see dozens of bows, with arrows nocked to the string, pointed in their direction. She dismissed the mana-constructs, allowing them to dissolve into motes of blue and gold magic.

For a mont, Wren winged around them in a circle, still in her bat form.

“It will be alright,” Liv assured her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Finally, the huntress shifted into her human form and landed among them, still clearly skittish. “You say that, Liv, but you’re not the one with hundreds of troops camped around the waystone.”

“Let’s just find out exactly what’s going on here,” Liv said, and turned toward the wall. She strode forward, though the gate was closed, until she was within shouting distance of the ramparts. Her friends moved with her, as a group, and she hoped the distance was enough to keep the Elden warriors from seeing just how filthy and bedraggled they all were.

“Declare yourselves!” An Elden warrior called down from the wall, just above the gate, in the dialect of the Vakansa. As he didn’t seem to be carrying a bow himself, Liv guessed that he might be so sort of knight or guard captain. Like Airis ka Reimis, and most of the Eld that Liv could see on the walls, his skin was several shades darker than her own family, whose skin tended to be nearly as pale as their hair.

“I am Livara Tär Valtteri kæn Syvä,” she declared, and the winter wind pulled at her white hair. “I co at the invitation of Airis ka Reimis kæn Ceria, and to keep an old promise. These are my friends and guests. I co also to pay my part of a bargain with Saana Tär Taavetti, and she will recognize my na.”

There followed a mont of conversation among the warriors which, while it might not have been precisely silent, was still too far above for Liv to make out with no one shouting down to them. “A daughter of the House of Syvä is welco here,” the commander finally declared. “Your human guests, however, must be confined to the trading district.”

“When I brought my guests to Kelthelis they weren’t turned away,” Liv shouted back. “They were given rooms and invited to the sa table as my grandparents. Is your hospitality less than that of Auris Ka Syvä?”

“What are they saying,” Rosamund asked, keeping her voice low.

“They want you all to stay in the trading district,” Liv told them in Lucanian.

“With the army that’s hunting us,” Rose grumbled. “Wonderful.”

“I’m handling it,” Liv said.

“What the House of Syvä chooses to do in their own lands is not our concern,” the commander called down. “This is Al’Fenthia, not Kelthelis. I have my orders.”

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“Then send for Airis ka Reimis,” Liv shouted back. “And tell him that I am here waiting for him. He will see .” Deciding that she needed to make a point, Liv muttered, “Celet Sedia,” and built herself a seat of ice that was perhaps more reminiscent of a throne than she had any right to. There she sat, watching the commander on the wall.

There was a bustling, which Liv assud ant the warriors had sent a runner to whatever seat of power Airis and his family governed from. When she’d been a girl and first t the rchant, she’d imagined him as a sort of baron. Now that she’d learned more of her father’s people - of her people - she guessed that his parents, aunts or uncles would sit on the council of elders. But Airis would be the one to do the traveling, the haggling, and to lead soldiers in battle.

“You couldn’t have made thrones for the rest of us?” Wren complained, leaning on the ice for just a mont. As soon as she felt the cold, however, she flinched and straightened up. “How can you sit on that?”

“I’m using the waste heat from sculpting it in the first place to keep myself warm,” Liv explained. “Anyway, I’m the one that needs to look impressive at the mont, as it’s my family’s reputation we’re counting on.”

“So what rift was that to the east?” Rose asked, while they waited. Up on the walls, the Elden warriors had lowered their bows, but they were still watching.

“The Garden of Thorns,” Sidonie said. “We have records of it because the battle there was an allied offensive on the part of both Eld and humans. Ceria, the Vædic Lady of Thorns, was killed by -”

“Semhis Thorn-Killer,” Liv finished. “I’ve read his diary. The Sumrsets keep a copy at Whitehill, and I’ve got one of my own. This is the House of Ceria we’re dealing with, by the way.”

“Eld descended from the Vædic Lady whose corpse is over in that valley?” Rose guessed. “So are they going to be proud of her or hate her?”

“That’s often a bit of a ssy question,” Liv said. “And I don’t know enough of their family history to be able to answer it. Keri’s family seed to have a pretty good relationship with Bælris, and they still use his na. My grandparents hated Celris so much they nad our House after my great-grandmother, instead. My best guess? They use the na, so they must have at least so attachnt to her.”

“I imagine that none of us would consider it a coincidence we arrive just in ti to witness an eruption,” Arjun ventured, after a mont. Rather than face the city, he remained turned east, scanning the area for mana beasts.

“Ractia tends to use them as distractions,” Wren reminded them. “So, no, I would guess there is so purpose.

Their conversation ca to an abrupt end when the gates swung open, and a small troop of mounted Eld rode out to them, escorting a carriage drawn by two bay mares. When the leading warrior spoke, Liv recognized the voice of the man who had shouted down to them from the rampart of the city.

“Livara Tär Valtteri,” the man addressed her, and then continued in the Vakansa dialect, “You have co at a difficult ti. Nevertheless, Saana Tär Taavetti has commanded us to bring you to her at Derukeis. My na is Eliel, and I have command of the north gate. A carriage has been provided for your use.”

“Thank you,” Liv said, rising from her throne of ice. Perhaps she had gone a bit too far with that, but she decided to leave it to lt on its own. “The carriage is for us,” she told her friends in Lucanian.

Unfortunately, the carriage was rather an enclosed space, putting the five of them right up against each other. Liv hadn’t fully considered what that ant until they’d all climbed in and set off rumbling through the city streets.

“Blood and shadows we stink,” Rose said, making a face.

“I think the next ti we set off to ambush our enemies in the dead of night,” Sidonie proposed, “we should all bring at least one change of clothes. Whether we expect to be back the sa day, or not.”

There were general noises of approval, and then they were thankfully distracted by the sights of the city. If the great trees in the Elden districts had seed imnse from the air, they were absolutely jaw-dropping when viewed from the ground. Liv had seen old-growth trees along the forested slopes that bordered the Aspen River Valley, but none of them compared to this.

The trunks rose straight up, with no lower branches until perhaps three stories in height, and they were as wide at the base as a wagon, at least. Stairways had been built onto the trunks, spiraling around the entire circumference up to the platforms built just beneath the canopy.

Liv had never seen so many Eld in one place. Thousands upon thousands of them, all with the sa ears as her, if not the sa skin, eyes or hair. The look of Ceria’s servants was the most prevalent, but she saw the sun-kissed blonde hair and tanned skin that marked Keri’s relatives, from Mountain ho, as well as branches of her people that Liv had never laid eyes on before: pale skin with a tinge of lavender, hair of midnight blue like her grandmother, more shades than a garden of flowers.

“They’re all so beautiful,” Rose murmured.

“It’s what the Vædim made us for,” Liv pointed out. “To be pleasing to their eyes. To entertain them. To be their dancers and singers and concubines.” Sothing about it sickened her. What would a true Eld even look like, Liv wondered? Every one of them, her included, had been twisted with magic and bred like livestock just to please their ancient masters. Who would even know what was natural, and what was designed?

Rosamund must have heard sothing in the words, because she reached out and took Liv’s hand in her own. Liv considered pulling her hand away. She hadn’t decided what to make of Rose’s feelings, and she didn’t want to lead the other girl on. Still, the point of contact was a comfort, so she only squeezed back gently.

The carriage finally ca to a halt around one of the largest trunks, even in a grove of giants. Commander Eliel dismounted, opened the door of the carriage, and offered Liv a hand out. If he felt any hesitancy at how ragged and filthy they all were, he was too professional to show it. Instead, once they had all disembarked, he led them up the spiral stairwell.

They walked around the massive trunk three tis completely, until they were high enough that Liv was certain falling would lead to a broken leg or worse. Thankfully, there were elegantly shaped and polished rails along the edge of the stairs, just above waist height, to hold on to. Anywhere else, Liv would have said they were carved; here, she wondered if they had simply grown that way, at the behest of Elden magic.

The stairway deposited them on a great platform that extended out from the tree, as far across as the training grounds at Castle Whitehill. Upon it, a manor had been built: not a castle or palace, like Whitehill or Kelthelis, but more like the ornate hos built by wealthy mbers of Lucania’s rchant guilds.

Two warriors in armor and helms stood to either side of the door. The party must have been expected, for they simply bowed and opened the way. Eliel led them into a great foyer, and from there into a hall large enough to feast in, where half a dozen of the most wizened Eld Liv had t waited, along with a woman dark of hair and eyes, dressed not in armor but in a gown of green silk so vibrant it might have been cut from an erald.

“Livara Tär Valtteri, and companions,” Commander Eliel announced, and the entire assemblage turned to examine them.

“Thank you, commander,” the woman said, speaking flawless Lucanian. Her voice was rich and llifluous, the kind that imdiately set you at ease, and Liv wondered for a mont how she would sound singing. “I believe that I may speak for the elders of House Ceria when I say that it is a pleasure to welco another descendant of House Syvä to our ho. You only just missed your father.”

“He’s here?” Liv asked, imdiately losing track of what she had been intending to say.

“Valtteri Ka Auris was here, briefly,” the woman said. “At the beginning of the eruption. He has returned to Varuna through the waystone, to hold our defenses there.”

Liv grinned. “You have a functioning waystone in Varuna? Not even the guild has that.”

“It was bought at the cost of blood,” one of the ancient n gathered at the front of the room remarked. “But yes, we have a foothold once again in the west. You have our condolences on the death of your grandfather, Livara.”

“Thank you.” Liv inclined her head.

“It is irregular to permit guests who are not Vakansa,” one of the older won said. “However, your family has earned at least this much, in the eyes of the council. We have questions for you.”

“Tonight,” the elegant woman in the green dress said. “Look at you, children. You are all exhausted and weary from your journeys. Co and be welco. We will see you cleaned, and clothed, and fed, and after that you will speak to the council.”

“I haven’t caught your na,” Liv said.

“Saana Tär Taavetti.” The woman smiled. “My daiverim has told a good deal about you, Livara. I see what he saw. You are the very image of your aunt.”