Aron walked steadily up the path, feet under shoulders, as his father had taught him. The village Odel, his home, still lay a thousand hands above him, up the winding path, and he could not yet hear the sounds of life from this far below, only the rumble of the nearby river. The children of Odel learned to walk twice, once as small children, and then as they got stronger, they were taught the porter’s walk, the walk that allowed them to travel many miles in the mountains without tiring. He carried his pack, its leather straps fitted almost comfortably to his back and shoulders. It was not yet his pack, as he was not yet fully grown, but his older brother, Edden, had given it to Aron when he had outgrown it. He had used it for some months, but he could not get the pack to sit quite right on his back, and as he stepped, it lurched slightly from side to side, stealing a little precious energy from each step.
He paused to take a long draught of the clear mountain water from his waterskin. There would be frost tonight in Odel, he knew, but for now the midday sun bore down on his curled black hair and brown skin with harsh warmth, throwing each plant and flower into relief. His father, Poe, had often told him and his brothers that heat could be just as dangerous as the cold, and that in a faraway land filled with oceans of sand, men could go mad under the sun.
Aron looked out across the long valley to the south. He loved the view from this steep stretch of the path. From this high, he could see the two great arms of the mountains stretch down, along either side of the valley, all the way to where they fell to hills and then to nothing. The river, which arose in the lake near Odel and was named for the village (or was the village named for the river?), was now below him and to his left, falling in cascades and rushing foam over the great blocks and boulders strewn throughout its gorge.
Far below where the valley began, he saw rising dust and stretches of cleared farmland among the dense forest. This was Chana, the bustling heart of the northern valley, from where he had just walked. South of Chana, the river, now stilled and wide, was visible in bright strips and flashes among the forest as it meandered its way down the great valley it had carved. Aron knew, from tales around the forest, that the river made its way southeast through the old forest, and then became wild again, dropping over a series of great flooding rapids as it descended out of the valley and down to Fornos, the port capital. It then ran through the great walled city before losing itself in a marsh that ended in the sea.
Aron had never been beyond Chana. He knew what he knew of the world from his father, and from Odel’s great teacher, old Ghalin, a ferocious old woman who had once been a mercenary, and who taught the youngest geography and how to spar. And some from Ohara, he supposed, the shaman, although he was never sure which of his stories were parables or fact or both.
The young of Odel, of which Aron counted for several months more, were often sent to Chana on market day to sell goods and fetch supplies for the remote village. Today, Aron had started down while the stars were still faintly visible with the dawn, alone, and walked with a pack full of dried medicinal flowers and aged cheese for which Odel was known. Each bundle of plants was bound with strong twine, and sorted according to purpose and order. Solindra, a deep purple flower, was used to stop bleeding quickly, he knew, and he could recognize a few others, but the dozens of varieties made his head spin. Better to leave that to the trained allopaths, a discipline he had no interest in. He had left the plants and cheese in Chana and traded them for various other supplies the village needed, furs, seeds, dried meat, and dense blocks of fat and wax, and was soon on his way back on his way up to Odel, taking each step carefully along the broken and rutted stone path.
He had not expected to meet anyone on the way back up. Nevertheless, as he rounded a switchback, a man appeared a few hundred feet up, trotting at speed down the track. Quite in contrast to Aron’s slow, careful porter’s step, the man seemed to be almost skipping down the mountain. Seeing Aron, he waved cheerily, and quickened his step as if to meet him. Aron stopped, and in looking closer, realized the man was unfamiliar to him. This was odd, as Aron had been in Odel just this morning, and there had been no talk of anyone strange.
They approached each other, Aron warily, the stranger jauntily.
“No need for alarm, my young friend!” The man said, with a strange accent. “I bear you no ill.”
Aron paused, unsure of how to respond.
The man, sensing some hesitation, held out his hand. “I am Vado.”
“Aron.” Aron said, finding his manners at last, and shaking the other’s hand. “Please be welcome to the Vale of Odel.”
“Odel? Ah yes, that must be the settlement at the top.” Vado said, unfolding a large scroll. “Do forgive my ignorance, I am, as you may have gathered, not familiar with this area. I have just travelled from the north, but I may have gotten rather lost in the forest and missed Odel altogether. Would you be so kind as to show me where we are on my map?”
Aron knew of no trail to the north of Odel. To the north of the village, the forest rose steeply and steadily to the talus slopes of the mountains, and only fog and sheep lived there.
Vado plastered out his map onto a nearby boulder and smoothed it with a few cobblestones from the trail. Aron peered over, the bright sun illuminating the spidery lines of shining blue and red ink that marked the parchment. Odel had no maps, only a treasured few dusty books of medicine and plant drawings used to teach herbs and literacy. He had seen a royal map of the valley in Chana when a tax collector had visited from Fornos, with black ink and precise lines and distances. Vado’s map was different, and he recognized no places upon it. Even the letters were unfamiliar and complex.
He stared for a moment to be sure, and then said, “Sir, I am afraid I do not know the land that this map depicts. We are between the villages of Odel and Chana, and far to the south, the port city of Fornos.”
Vado smiled distantly, his eyes not meeting Aron’s. “Ah yes. And what kingdom would we be in? What land?”
“The kingdom of Rinstone, under the great queen Akka Rinstone.” Aren said, suddenly feeling as if he was being tested. He hastily added, “And King Edol.” Just in case Vado turned out to be some errant royal official come to quiz Odel’s loyalties.
Vado lost his smile, slowly. His brow furrowed. He gazed uneasily into the blue sky in silence. Aron wondered slowly if Vado had been lost for too long and had taken leave of his wits, and just as he was gathering his courage to bid farewell to the strange man, Vado snapped to and smiled again. “Not to worry, not to worry. Of course. Rinstone. Should have known.”
Aron noticed now that Vado’s brightly colored clothes were clean, unwrinkled linen, and his pack was full, not at all like someone who had spent the last fortnights wandering through the northern mountains.
The cliff’s jet-black face obscured the sky. Aron had never been this close to it, had only seen it from afar. From the