Chapter 55: Deferring the Strengthening

The best thing about traveling is that you have time to think. The worst part about traveling is that you have time to think.

-Wrend

The next day, beneath glowering clouds that never unleashed their rain, the world reversed as they came out of the Valley of the Elder Gods and traveled along the lip of a cliff that dipped nearly two thousand feet to the bottom, where a river carved its way through the red rock and dirt. In places, the gorge narrowed to just a few thousand feet, but generally stretched several miles wide. Teirn commented that as he looked out across it, he felt like he looked into the very mouth of the world. Wrend agreed: it was quite a sight for those who, two weeks before, had never seen more than canyon walls.

The following day, the canyon narrowed and eventually disappeared, with the river entering a tunnel far below. After another mile or so, the ground on both sides of the road fell away, so that before long the caravan lumbered along the rocky ridge known as the Draegon’s Spine. It stretched a hundred feet wide. Golden-copper rocks the size of cattle littered its surface, along with tenacious sagebrush and poison sage. On both sides, the desert spread out to mountainous horizons; and after an initial upward slope of several hundred feet, the ridge turned downward, descending into the basin below. By evening, they reached Waran, a city of one-story adobe structures at the base of the spine, at the head of a long desert prairie.

There, the people wept as the Master passed through their streets, followed by the demigods that remained in the caravan. During the journey, many demigods had stayed in their cities or departed to other parts of the country, but nearly two hundred remained in the caravan, including the three that would stay in Waran.

One of them was a brand new Caretaker that Wrend had known back in the Seraglio. She accepted her responsibility with solemnity, even as the people wept because Athanaric could not perform the Strengthening on the demigod she replaced. That demigod had died back in the Seraglio, in the fight at the Courtyard of the Wall. Now, the people would suffer without seeds strengthened by his blood.

In the morning, after the battalion of servants and priests had packed up the camp, loaded it into the caravan wagons, and headed out across the plains, the Master summoned Wrend.