Swordmage by Richard Baker Page B

be proud of them both, Geran reflected. It was a heartbreak and a shame that they’d lost their father while so young, but that was hardly an uncommon thing in the Moonsea lands. Wars, monsters, feuds, and hard toil in hard lands orphaned many children and left most of those in much grimmer circumstances. At least Natali and Kirr had their mother and their father’s kinfolk to look after them, as well as a castle full of men and women sworn to the Hulmasters’ service. As far as he could tell, the servants and maids who worked in the castle loved the two young Hulmasters as if Natali and Kirr were their very own children.
    He reached the bottom of the causeway, which was a small square called the Harmach’s Foot. Mule-drawn wagons clattered over the cobblestones, a steady stream passing both north and south. Those heading north were bound for the mining and woodcutting camps beyond the Winterspear Vale with provisions of all kinds—salted meat, sacks of flour, casks of ale, wheels of cheese, blankets, tools, all the things that men living out in the field would need. Those heading south were coming into town from the valley farms. At that time of year, all they had were eggs, dairy goods, and meat to sell in the town’s markets. It would be months before the summer crops came in.
    He didn’t recognize any of the drivers heading out to the work camps. If their accents and manner of dress were any guide, most were from other Moonsea cities. He saw more Mulmasterites and Melvauntians, and even a few Teshans. Geran shook his head, struck again by how crowded the town seemed. “Well, where to?” he asked himself.
    He thought for a moment then struck out north along the Vale Road. Once he left the Harmach’s Foot, the area between Griffonwatch and the Winterspear reverted to old, brush-covered rubble, with only a few buildings standing amid the remains of the old city. Most of the living town clustered close to the harbor, and the northern and western districts of Old Hulburg remained ruins except for the best sites, such as the Troll and Tankard, a taphouse on the edge of town.
    When the Vale Road finally emerged from the ruins of Old Hulburg and headed north into the Winterspear farmlands, Geran turned west at the Burned Bridge. Centuries ago a fine and strong bridge had crossed the Winterspear on five stone piers. In Lendon Hulmasters time a simple trestle of wood had been laid across the remains of the ancient stone piers to link Griffonwatch more directly with Daggergard Tower, a small barracks and watchtower on the west bank of the river. Geran paused at the top of the bridge to lean on the rail and watch the water race by below. The snowmelt of spring was just beginning; in a few weeks the Winterspear would be ten feet higher, roaring with the voice of Thar’s high snowfields and the distant glaciers of the Galenas.
    He made his way from Daggergard along Keldon Way, heading south as he circled the town. Above him rose the strange stone forest the folk of Hulburg knew simply as the Spires. Soaring, club-shaped columns of pale green stone stood embedded in the flanks of the ridge marking the western edge of the town, in some cases bursting through the old foundations of the ancient ruins. The Spires were changeland too, just like the spectacular Arches that guarded the eastern side of Hulburg’s harbor. Both were inexplicable legacies of the Spellplague that had swept Faerun nearly a century ago. Odd landmarks such as the Spires or the Arches were commonplace in many lands—-rock and root of alien Abeir, piercing Toril’s flesh when the two worlds, long separated, had merged in a decade of unthinkable catastrophes following the Year of Blue Fire. Geran had heard that many such eruptions of Abeiran landscape in other lands were infested with all
    sorts of strange planar monstrosities or held undreamed-of marvels of living magic, but the Spires were simply tangled, fluted pillars of malachite, silent and inert. No