Chương 323: 5.2

Jewel was surprised to find she missed Alder. Frustrating as it might be to deal with the elf, it had become rather nice to listen to. Alder however had not found its way to them since her tour started heading north through the interior of Viznove. If there was any particular reason for that she had no idea, maybe it was because of the chill? She doubted that, but the fae creature was hard to predict.

Still she would have liked to hear it now while she was giving cover to as much of her entourage as she could cover with the expanse of her wings. The weather was only just turning colder as they passed from Grain Turn to Debt's Season. And the wet of rain could be a killer. Neither bothered her larger self, but it pained her spawn and risked the rest of the party enough they had changed to their heavier cloaks and clothing. It made those two times they had to camp a very dreary affair as well.

Muriel had developed a cough one night but it cleared up with a hot herbal broth from Dariusz. The lateness of the season and its inclement weather was making all the delays earlier in the year sting more. Her party was suffering because they were now traveling in an ill season for this part of Viznove. Even if she would never trade an early return home for Kliatbatrn's health. At least Gem's new winter dresses were warmer than the last set. And the cloaks were good cover for the lighter rains.

But clothing could only help so much against autumn storms and the life sapping cold of the zephyrvamp when it blew down from the mountains. So Jewel shielded them from the worst of it, and the staff and footmen cycled among one another for places under her wings. It had always been a faint hope that she would finish the tour and be home in Valasect before the snows came. Now it would be a heaven's blessing if they should be secure in Ogien before the weather made further travel too fraught.

It was frustrating, like an itch she couldn't scratch. Something she'd only properly discovered after Gem started shedding her first scales. But it suited the feeling of a delayed plan. Annoying but not precisely a disaster. If it was only delays that plagued Jewel. The tour however was not turning out how Jewel had hoped. And here nearing its end she was not confident it had prepared her how she wanted it too. She had learned the merit and character of a great many of her vassals.

Mertod and Petra were both an agreeable sort that if not for their near irrelevance to the marsheling of Viznove's armies Jewel would have gladly given reign over the interior of the county to either of them. When looked at only as letters and reports it made good sense! Had even been one of the options she planned for. Then there was the reality of having seen what lands they ruled.

Their demesnes were theoretically rich and the villages with allegiances owed them widespread, with good metal mines for Petra's family lands and vast only lightly harvested forests for Mertod. But the terrain of both their territories meant that both of them combined barely had half the population of Rochford. The majority of the people who ostensibly owed them fealty were hill land shepherds and mercurial woods rangers. They each had barely a dozen retinue in their household and most of those were bowmen!

Hardly any possible levy could be mustered even if either of them had the will to try. And while they could offer copper, timbre and charcoal in theoretical abundance. To actually produce it? Seasonal laborers were needed to meet any output of worth and that cut into whatever riches that the gifts of their territory could have brought. It sadly made opportunities to raise their position as her Vassals fraught.

March Lord Dominik seemed 'secure' in his position along the border with Magarska but trying to put another lord over him was going to be a dangerous thing to pursue like she had hoped to consolidate the March lords. Along with the entire confusion that was whoever was Lord Mayor of Light's End? It destroyed any plan she had to unify the south as one fortified under one lord. It looked like Viznove would remain a scattered mass of vassals still. It dragged on her like lode stones. Love this story?

Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! She was drawing to the end of a year spent touring Viznove and Jewel's intent to unify her county under a more manageable number of vassals was in shambles. The interior of the county was only better for the number of mostly inconsequential baronies and temples filling out the rolling hills and winding brooks. Jewel was hopeful that she could perhaps parcel them to her more troublesome lords and ladies to soothe egos.

At least the temples seemed like they would be easy enough to hand off to the closest lords with minimal risk of over empowering anyone troublesome. But the temples themselves brought her mind to another failure in this adventure. It had been a kindling of hope, that there were wonders to be found in her realm that might teach her something of the nature of healing. Of her own powers. The best sources she searched were that of the temples and their workers.

But when she asked questions both from the mouth of Gem and as inquiries as herself their liege it settled into the same answer. Many things were within the providence of the divine. Wonderful and terrible both, most of the heads of the temples in their many varied titles were troubled by her direct question. But when pressed nothing to cure the ailment that had laid Kliatbatrn low was forthcoming.

Even when she read their records and books as Gem, or asked among their apprentices the answer remained the same in a way that stung even more. Always the same one among them came up as the best to inquire into concerns of the care of the body. Bitta of Thuringia, Keeper of the Temple Fortress of Nerthus! Her efforts to tend to the sick and injured via dealings with the divine were ahead of all Jewel's other temple vassal's means! And she'd missed it entirely!

Jewel had already visited the highest peak of Viznove's accumulated knowledge in healing prayers and hadn't even realized it! She'd squandered Gem's chance to read of the use of humors and divine intervention for the care of mortal wounds and curses of the body. She'd spent that chance in something that could have saved Kliatbatrn on reading historical texts and records that were mostly available in duplicate in every other temple in Viznove!

The best answer to one of her quests this year had been waiting for her at the start! That was the worst itch of this whole awful matter. It was so frustrating. Maybe if she had simply asked?! Yet she hadn't known what a dire state her General on Land and family ally was at the time. She had been assured in his fine health as reported just that last winter! But what if she could have restored him in full if just she was a little bit more curious?

The lost opportunity, the wasted time, the possibility she could have done more if she'd just been aware? It stung worse than arrows, and spears, or even the blow of the Terror Boar so long ago. Worse than the creeping chill of the winter to come when they made camp last night. But there would be no camping in drafty way stations tonight! She had just caught sight of their destination! Ogien awaited ahead of them.

Nestled below in a cleft between the shallower hills to the west and the great central peak of the second of the Ridgetail's great pillars to the east. Tales among the peasants and travelers they passed sometimes called it the snout of the Ridgetails. Claimed it was some colossal wyrm's vast horn holding up the sky. Its counterpart north was apparently that of a raised wing. Some even more farcical tales claimed all the Ridgetails were the felled body of the great Tyrant itself.

But Jewel had read the records of old Cantor's generals which preceded the Tyrant by centuries. The Vault's pillars were older than all of them. Furthermore she didn't see the resemblance. The mountains of her home curled and rose in shapes and forms far too disjointed to be that of any beast no matter how titanic. Not unless whatever had felled it then tore it utterly asunder and buried it in stone. Still the Ogien.

The river was now reportedly wider then it had been years past, gentled and slowed by the work of Tsulogothulan years ago. Jewel could still see a few of the scars from that act. There were villages drowned by the now risen level of the river. Not destroyed, their people were able to move as the shore swelled out season after season. But not every building had been deemed worth tearing down. So Shrines and taller structures now acted as islets and places to anchor barges and fishermen's boats up and down the river.

At a distance it seemed all were happy with the change. Jewel doubted that was the case. Who would be happy to lose their home? To the north, around the swell of the Pillar's rising cliffs, Jewel could also see rising clouds of winter mists that rose from the Ogien's headwaters. Where she read that the water came free high in the north facing side of the mountains hot enough to scald the skin of men and beasts.

Supposedly the springs also tasted of sulfur so far upland and intermingled around spouts of everlasting flame. The heraldry of Lord Ogien's family. The light of those flames would be invisible this time of year for the rising steam of the highland river. Furthermore it was blocked by the great stone edifice of the southern Pillar of the Ridgetails. So close it felt less like a pillar and more a great wall of stone.

Greenery falling off from its sides long before the peak itself was lost amidst the heavy gray clouds. Their path was now so close to it you could almost get the angle right to see all the way up into the funnel of roiling storms that circled the peak itself. Like a throat of smoke swallowing the earth itself. Or as if the stone was a fountain pouring down from the heavens to flow down into all the lands of Viznove. Jewel turned her gaze from the sight of the sky and shook herself.

Releasing sheets of autumn rain from the edges of her wings. They were almost there, with a solid pace her party would make it to that distant city of Ogien with its drowned and rebuilt wharves and docks. To meet with the man that had asked for the power of sorcery to drown a dozen riverside villages so he could have river barges come north from the Vah. Jewel wondered if Lord Sergej ever regretted what he asked for Tsulogothulan to do?

Looking down upon the land changed irrevocably by his request she was not sure she wouldn't have.