As soon as the thought struck him, he felt guilty about his father and about his brother. He rode back along the small column to where Teclis lay stretched out on a bolster in the back of a wagon. The tented canvas cover of the wagon was drawn back and his twin lay looking up at the sky. They had hired it from one of the villagers who dwelled near his father’s villa and used it for taking his produce into town to market. The elf would come into town in a few days and collect it.
‘Isn’t this wonderful,’ Tyrion said unable to contain his enthusiasm.
‘If you can call having your bones jarred on this wooden instrument of torture wonderful then I suppose it is,’ Teclis said. He was smiling though and he looked better than he had in months. Tyrion had worried that the hardships of travel might finish off his brother but the potions Lady Malene had brewed really seemed to have improved his health. More than that, the prospect of travel and of learning magic seemed to have eased his troubled spirit and made life more endurable for him. Tyrion suspected it had given Teclis a reason to live. He felt grateful to Lady Malene for that at least.
He glanced ahead. The sorceress was riding side by side with Korhien Ironglaive. The two of them exchanged secret smiles but there was nothing sinister in them. They looked like the lovers which Tyrion supposed they were. It was hard to imagine what the open-handed and hearted warrior and the stony-faced mage-woman saw in each other, but they obviously saw something.
Tyrion wondered how Father was getting on. He was not concerned for his welfare. Prince Arathion was quite capable of looking after himself without any help from his sons and his work would keep him from being lonely. It was just strange to think of him wandering about the empty villa with only Thornberry for company.
It made Tyrion uneasy. Sometimes monsters came down out of the mountains. Maybe one of them could get over the wall. He told himself not to be foolish. His father was a mage. He was capable of handling any monster that might find its way down to their home.
Teclis had raised himself up on one elbow and was looking over the side of the wagon into the distance. ‘I think I see the sea,’ he said. Tyrion followed his pointing finger. They had just crested the brow of a hill and below them there was indeed a wide slice of shimmering blue starting where the green land ended.
The land was starting to change around them. It looked much more heavily cultivated and they had passed the fields worked by yeomen and many glasshouses where enchanted fruits were grown in magically controlled environments.
It was the richest and most fertile place Tyrion knew although he would have been the first to admit that his experience of such places was limited. Here and there on the higher grounds were mansions of such a scale that their father’s house could be easily fitted into one wing. Indeed, it seemed little better than some of the yeomen’s cottages they had passed. Tyrion was used to his father being the richest property owner in the area where he had grown up. Once again, he realised now that compared to the elves of even this small town, his father was very poor indeed. It was odd to realise how small his life had been and how large the world was. Exciting too.
On many of the buildings green paper-lanterns hung outside windows or on verandas. People were beginning to prepare for the Feast of Deliverance, the great festival that celebrated the return of spring and the saving of Aenarion’s children from the forces of Chaos by the Treeman Oakheart. Alongside the streets stood little carved models of the Treeman, a creature that looked like a friendly cross between an elf and a massive oak. All elves had reason to be grateful to him. Without his intervention, there would be no Everqueen. Every spiritual leader of the elves since that time had been descended from Aenarion’s daughter, Yvraine. Tyrion had a more personal reason to be grateful. He was descended from Aenarion’s son, Morelion.
He rode back to where Teclis lay. His brother grimaced. He was tired and the strain of the long day’s ride showed in his face. ‘We will be in town soon and aboard ship after that.’