It took them just over an hour to reach the town of Aldervale, a journey that had nearly killed Tak the first time he'd attempted it. He looked about curiously as they passed through, wondering whether he would see anyone he recognised. Lyssa herself, perhaps, or her father, Jack. There was no-one in the street, though, everyone having retreated indoors to cower in fear until the riders had passed, and a few minutes later they were out in open farmland again, riding through country that was totally unknown to the young wizard.

     Tak was surprised how fast his riding skills came back to him. Before they'd gone a dozen miles he was handling his horse as though he'd been riding all his life. It was a wonderful feeling to be out in the open again, riding under an empty sky with fields and trees on either side, and his heart soared with delight as he watched birds wheeling overhead and small animals scampering off the road ahead of them to the safety of the low hedgerows and ditches that ran alongside.

     He wanted to give his horse its head and let it speed away in a full gallop, the cold wind blowing his hair and stinging his face, the road a blur beneath the flying hooves, and only his fear of Gal-Gowan, riding ahead of him, stopped him. If only he'd been on his own, master of his own destiny. He felt now as though Castle Nagra had been his prison for the past five years, that Molos Gomm was his jailer and Gal-Gowan a guard taking him to be tried again. The deceptive sense of freedom he was exulting in now made him realise just how dark and stuffy Castle Nagra really was. How he'd been stunted and warped by it, like a tree growing in the mouth of a cave. This was where he belonged. Out in the open air, where he had room to grow. Where he could breathe.

     They reached another town at around midday where they stopped for a meal. The patrons of the inn they chose were nervous and respectful as they served them, being especially careful around the red wizard himself, and the other customers fell silent and stared at them fearfully. It made Tak feel horribly self conscious. He would much rather have blended in among the locals, listening in on their conversation and maybe enjoying a chat with some of them. Getting to know the place and the people. Being treated as an equal and maybe making a friend or two.

     Gal-Gowan, however, was lordly and superior in everything he did and said, treating the innkeeper like a weak minded fool as he ordered him about in his imperious manner. Grimacing as he sniffed suspiciously at his food as if he was being offered the scrapings from a pig trough and glaring at the other customers as if they were carrying some vile disease that he feared he might catch if they got too close. It made Tak feel horribly embarrassed and he found himself thanking the staff effusively for every little thing they did. Complimenting them on the quality of the food in an attempt to compensate for the red wizard's terrible manners.

     Nothing he did could make up for the fact that he was a member of Gal-Gowan's party, though, and although the staff were polite enough on the surface he could sense the resentment and anger flowing beneath. As soon as the last crumb had been eaten and the last drop of wine drunk Tak hurried out to stand by his horse, eager to be away from the hostile atmosphere, but when he glanced back he saw the innkeeper's face light up with delight as the red wizard paid him with gold. More, he later found out, than a small hostelry like this would normally expect to make in a month.

     The afternoon saw them arrive at another small town where they exchanged their horses for fresh mounts. The red wizard was greeted with familiarity if not friendship by the stablemaster, and Tak deduced that this was the place where he always changed horses on his way to and from Castle Nagra. After that they rode hard to cross a stretch of rolling moorland that even Gal-Gowan seemed afraid of, and Tak didn't miss the way the soldiers scanned the horizon ceaselessly, as if expecting to come under attack at any time. It took them four hours to cross that wide and empty land and the horses were frothing at the mouths by the time they finally let them rest, but as the yellow sun touched the horizon they came to another small town where they changed their horses again and stopped for the night. Tak deduced that these two towns, one on either side of the downs, existed solely to allow people to cross that fearful land as quickly as possible, and he wondered what could possibly live there that even Gal-Gowan was scared of coming face to face with.

     After they'd eaten and were relaxing in a comfortable common room, Tak summoned up the courage to ask him. The soldiers were quartered downstairs, along with the other mundanes and commoners, and the two wizards were sharing the comfortable first storey room only with a trio of fat and wealthy merchants. They had gone into a group on the other side of the room to discuss their own kind of business, though, and the only attention they paid the two wizards was to glance suspiciously over their shoulders at them every so often to make sure they weren't trying to eavesdrop. Whatever schemes they were plotting were of no interest to Gal-Gowan, though, and the red wizard had put his feet up on a rosewood table and was smoking a pipe thoughtfully, gazing up at the curls of smoke that twisted around his head as if he could read the secrets of the universe in them.

     His attitude of peacefulness and contentment gave Tak the confidence to interrupt his reverie, and so he made his way over to stand beside him. Even so, though, it still took him a moment or two longer to find enough nerve to speak. At one point he almost chickened out, but then he remembered the offensively casual way the older wizard had taken pleasure in his body during his earlier visits. The way he'd been used as little more than a sex aid. The small core of stubborn defiance that lurked at the heart of him, the seed of what he would one day become, flared to life again and he found himself hoping he was interrupting an important train of thought. If he doesn't like being intruded upon, he found himself thinking, he shouldn't have intruded upon me in such a literal, physical fashion.

     "Excuse me, master," he said therefore, all doubt and hesitation gone. "May I speak with you?"

      The red wizard looked up at him, staring in surprise that he'd found the courage to speak, and he studied him for several moments before gesturing to the seat opposite him with the stem of his pipe. "What's bothering you, my young friend?"

      I'm not your friend, thought Tak irritably, but he managed to keep the thought from showing on his face. "I wondered why we rode so hard this afternoon. What was it about that place that we had to get through it as fast as possible?"

     "You've never heard of the Dreadmoors?" said Gal-Gowan with a condescending smile. "Old Gomm may be a fine teacher of magic but he neglected your geography, heh?"

     "I know almost nothing of what lies outside the castle." As you well know, thought Tak, bristling with anger. "If I am to be of any use to your master, though, I'm going to have to learn about the rest of the world sooner or later."

     "True, true," agreed Gal-Gowan, nodding, but then he leaned forward, his eyes suddenly hard and severe. "And he is our master, not just mine and Gomm's. He is your master also. Never forget that."

     "Forgive me," said Tak, cringing back into his seat with fear. "Our master. I meant to say our master."

     "I'm glad to hear it," said the red wizard, relaxing back into his seat. "As to your first question, you wanted to know about the Dreadmoors. Very well, I shall tell you. There was a battle there, many generations ago. The Dreadmoors are an ancient battlefield. That's where the army of Golden King Lud met the fell hordes of Dak the Black. You've never heard of them either, have you?" Tak was staring in wide eyed fear, however. "You have heard of them!" said Gal-Gowan in surprise.

     "There's a book about it in Molos Gomm's library," said Tak, "but I thought it was hundreds of miles away. I had no idea it was so close."

     "Less than a day's ride away from your front door," said Gal-Gowan with amusement. "Does that scare you?"

     "I don't know," admitted Tak. "Are the stories about it true? Do the spirits of the dead still rise from their graves, searching for new bodies to inhabit so they can continue their old vendetta? Does the very sight of them drive living men insane?"

     "As for your second question, I can tell you that it's not true. I've seen them now and again, and so have my men. You might have seen them yourself if you'd been luckier, but they're no danger to a man on horseback. They can't match the speed of a running horse. The danger is to people on foot. If you look out of the window you'll see armed men keeping a constant watch on the road from the Dreadmoors. Anyone arriving on foot is stopped and challenged to make sure they are who they say they are. Occasionally a man wanders into town possessed by the spirit of one of the fallen, and the only thing that can be done is to put him to death as quickly and cleanly as possible. That's the truth of the Dreadmoors. A lot of other stories have grown up around the place, but they're mostly nonsense."

     "But it took us hours to ride across it," cried Tak, fascinated by the story despite his determination to keep hating the teller. "No battlefield is that big, surely."

     "True," agreed Gal-Gowan, still watching him carefully. "The battle actually took place some miles north of the road we took, but the spirits are free to roam the moors, although they cannot leave them unless they find a living body to inhabit. There's something about the moors. Something in the ground. Old Gomm said he was going to study the matter some years back but I never heard that he made any progress. Probably something else came up and he forgot all about it."

     "Are there many places like that?" asked Tak. "Places where the dead roam, I mean. And why do the Gods permit it? I was taught that the dead are gathered for judgement and sent on to an afterlife in the spirit world. Why are some permitted to remain in the world?"

     Gal-Gowan laughed. "You ask hard questions," he said. "A cleric might be able to answer you but I can't. The business of wizards is with this world, not the next."

     "But there are other places like the Dreadmoors?" pressed Tak, growing more confident as the older wizard proved quite open and conversational. Almost friendly in fact. He didn't yet realise that Gal Gowan didn't have friends. Only superiors to be obeyed, subordinates to crush into obedience and enemies to be destroyed; something he had in common with most of the wizards of the time. In Gal Gowan's world, two wizards almost equal in the magical arts would compete with each other to determine which of them would be dominant over the other, and if Tak gave Gal-Gowan the idea that he was forgetting his place he would come down hard on him until he remembered it.

     For the moment, though, the red wizard was in an amiable mood. "Other places like the Dreadmoors?" he said therefore, staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "If you mean places of fear and mystery, places avoided by most right minded people, then yes, there are plenty of such places. The world is a riddle, and there are many things about it we will never understand. For instance, just a few days south of here is an ancient, ruined city thousands of years old with an architecture so strange that it's certain no human being ever lived there. Who built it, and what happened to them? The only clues come from strange dreams that come to those foolish enough to sleep there. Dreams so bizarre that they can seldom be described. Some people who sleep there awake into screaming madness as if they've witnessed horrors beyond the ability of the human mind to endure.

     "There's another place I know where there stands a circular wall five miles across, made of a substance so strong and hard that only the most powerful magic spells will touch it. It must have been meant to protect something inside, a castle or a fortress perhaps, but there's nothing there now but a flat field of grass. When the wizard Randarr, filled with curiosity, disintegrated a hole in the ground looking for ruins, he found a system of tunnels walled with metal far beyond the arts of the finest smiths and alchemists, along with human remains so old that they crumbled to dust when he touched them. Did our ancestors possess arts that we have lost?

     "And mystery is not confined to the land. You may have heard rumours of a land far to the west, across the sea?" Tak shook his head. "The mariner Curtis of Na-Hom claimed to have actually landed there and brought back tales of a race of beautiful, immortal men. Glorious folk untouched by age or disease. They greeted him with joy and delight and gave a great feast in his honour, but when other ships undertook the perilous voyage they met only brutish creatures of merciless savagery who butchered all they could lay their hands on. Was Curtiss lying, or are there many such lands over there, perhaps an entire island chain? The world is full of mystery, my young friend, and I've seen many things I don't understand. I don't doubt I'll see many more before I die."

     "Tell me more!" begged Tak, and he hated himself for the eagerness in his voice but he just couldn't help himself. He had to know! "Tell me more about the strange city to the south. What else is known about it? What do the local..."

     Gal-Gowan was losing interest now, though, and growing impatient with his younger companion. "No more questions," he snapped. "You need to rest, we have a long way to go tomorrow. Go to your room."

     Tak felt a crushing disappointment and, for a moment, considered chancing his luck. His curiosity was so fired up now that sleep was the last thing on his mind, but then he thought of that fluffy warm bed waiting for him down the corridor. Waiting for him and him alone. A bed all to himself. Nothing but soft cloth against his skin. He thanked the red wizard, therefore, and left the room, leaving Gal-Gowan alone with his pipe and his thoughts.

☆☆☆

     They rode long and hard the next day, stopping to change their horses and gulp down a quick meal at two small towns along the way. The mountains disappeared behind them and the land grew wide and flat, with dense forests, rushing rivers and the occasional small homestead that they sped past as if all the demons of Hell were after them. Once, they passed a small wagon going in the other direction, forcing it to swerve out of their way and into the ditch running alongside the road. Tak caught a glimpse of a young man glaring after them furiously. A man about his age, and beside him a dumpy young woman and a little girl. His wife and child.

     As the afternoon drew on they found themselves passing through country with a progressively higher population density. The farmland became almost continuous, with only the occasional patch of woodland in places where the ground was too rough for the plough and along the banks of rivers where it was too wet and marshy. The towns became larger and closer together as well, and the road they were following grew wider and busier.

     For the first time Tak got the sense of how far out on the edge of civilisation he'd been living. Not just since Molos Gomm had abducted him but all his life. He remembered his earliest memories of the Borderlands, believing that the widely separated homesteads represented the way all people lived everywhere. Now, at last, he saw the truth. Saw how isolated he'd been, how different were the lives of everyone else.