The Singing

Chapter 4: Fish Out of Water

The cracked cobblestones soon gave way to rutted roads and then it dwindled to game trails as we traveled amongst hills and bogs. The wet smell of rain, mildew and urine was all around of us. Now and then I would hear the sharp cry of a wild bird. More than once the cart stopped because it wheels sank deep into the bogland, and my father and Brynden, who owned the mule cart, had to get it out of the mud.

I wasn't aware of the passing of days inside the mule cart, whose backend had been covered by a tarp, pulled and stretched tight and as snug as the canvas of a drum, over my head and what meagre belongings, the majority which were our tools for smelting, jolted alongside me, with every bump of the pebbly road.

The journey to Primorsky Pass had been mostly flatlands and salt marshes, but father told me that since the journey to Primorsky Pass was too perilous for any journeyman, we would not be stopping for camp until we had safely entered the pass or have safely come out of it. Primorsky Pass was a natural, albeit complex tunnel system hidden inside a huge jagged mountain without shape or form, and as gray as the surroundings around it. It was the final bridge between Petra and the rest of the underlying civilization, and the fastest route to the nearest neighboring town- Narragansett.

The first time I took a peek from beneath the tarps I had seen the thick, creamy clouds of white closely-clustered and congealed around the sun, effectively covering it. It was a half-cast halcyon day when we reached the jagged foot of Primorsky Pass, and we have just come down from a narrow trail that went winding down the gentle slope of the valley, and almost hidden by the wilderness of brush and pine trees there lay the almost imperceptible trail upwards the imposing mountain pass.

Afterwards, I was only aware of the road going up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge beneath which water rushed very fast and with a great deal of noise. Just when I thought the bumpy drive would never come to an end, we finally climbed steeply and steadily up the proud arch of Primorsky Pass, the sound of rushing water from above growing louder and more certain. At this I finally poked my head out the backend, and saw that we were driving up to a winding road rising slowly to the gentle mountainside of Primorsky Pass, perilously close to the edge- a width more and our mule cart would fall into the abyss.

"We'll stop here," my father barked to Brynden, who had owned the mule cart and drove it, and the hooves grinded to a halt. I looked out again and saw a watch house on a ridge above the mountain floor, with broad open terraces and stilts reaching far back down the edge. It was tall and thin and spindly and swayed dangerously with each cold, icy breath of the wind, and looked more like a desolate outhouse than a guard post, built with boards of faded driftwood, washed by rain and sundried by the sun, and colored gray by age. Beside the watch house there yawned the inky darkness of the huge cave mouth, beckoning us in.

"Ishmael?" My fatherhollered into the wind. Suddenly, the door from the watch house slammed openwith the force of a wind, and there came out a man of indistinguishable age,his body tall and gaunt, with pale, stringy hair the color of straw, with much gray mixed in, a blank, emaciated face, milky blue eyes framed with cataract, a tomato-shaped, bulbous nose and a beard made up of closely clustered coarse curls that barely hid a shapeless, inflexible mouth of the unsmiling. Over all, it was a face that did not inspire safety, security, comfort or confidence.

The man peered out at us over the moonlit darkness. "What do you want?" he asked crabbily.

"Safe passage," my father replied. "What spells do you have?"

"Not much," Ishmael replied. "I only have a couple of lightning scrolls left."

"We'll take what we can," my father sighed.