On the way to the Mountains, Toan was the last town still serviced by the stagecoach from Varoonya. From here, Enim had to make his own way.

He carefully chose a brown mare at the horse market and even met a farmer who agreed to take his baggage. So he set out, riding alongside the cart at a leisurely pace, taking in the landscape and the smell of fields on the breeze. Homesteads and hamlets glided past, sparkling streams and blooming orchards, ducks and cows and sheep. White clouds drifted overhead, and to Enim it all seemed a little like having journeyed into a picture book. Nice, but somewhat unreal. And impermanent too. Soon the picture book would close and then he would find himself back in the real world. In the Mountains, this time.

Whatever that might mean.

Enim shifted in the saddle.

He had grown up in Varoonya. All his family and friends were there. How would it be to arrive in a completely new world? To know absolutely no one?

Enim bit his lip.

There were diamonds in the valley of Shebbetin, he knew that much. And mines, where tons of stone needed to be moved with the help of magical traptions. Since he was an artificer, capable of creating and repairing traptions, surely someone would want to hire him? Even if everything he had done at the academy had been models and exercises. A real traption, sitting in the depths of a mountain like an old giant of cogwheels and magic, might still be another matter. Would Enim even be able to handle that, when he was all alone in the darkness underground?

Enim squared his shoulders and encouraged his horse to pick up the pace.

*

After two days, Enim reached Hebenir, a small village huddled into the steep rise leading up to the pass. All traders spent the night here. It was possible to reach Shebbetin in one day from Hebenir, but it had to be a very long day, especially if one was going with a cart.

So it was well before dawn when the merchant who had agreed to take Enim along let her wagon rumble out of the inn's courtyard, lanterns swaying in the dark. Enim's horse followed close behind. The dirt track they rode on wound up a slope behind the village, softly meandering through fields and meadows. But just as the first gleam of morning began to brighten up the sky, the road disappeared into a thick forest and they were plunged into darkness again. Only rare fingers of light penetrated the gloom here and there, slight shimmers breaking through the crowns in odd places, all giving Enim a vague, somewhat dreamlike feeling of his surroundings. Black trunks stood solemnly all around, companions to a wordless whispering song sent down from the treetops by the wind. The track got steeper and steeper, and increasingly thick undergrowth pressed onto the path from all sides, hindering their climb. Everything felt dark and dense.

And then, very suddenly, they were out.

As they rode up over the crest, sunlight exploded into Enim's eyes, radiating brightly over the open highlands. The sky stretched endlessly overhead, a pale blue and gold striped with pink. A chilly wind blew hair into Enim's face, and from high above came the shrill, piercing cry of a hawk.

Enim shook his head slightly, as if trying to wake up.

This was it, no doubt. He had arrived.

This was the Mountains.

They rode on the whole day, following the thin thread of a trail that wove across the highlands, a delicate dark yarn in a richly textured tapestry. Enim felt the slopes rise and fall beneath him like the timeless breath of the earth. He had become taciturn, like his guide. They just traveled on and on, in this vast, silent landscape, allowing themselves to become two tiny spots in a quiet, ancient, boundless world.

The sun moved along its arc. Gradually, the shadows grew longer until their dark fingers reached as far as the sky, pointing out into the universe. Enim had never before seen so many stars. In the blackness of night he heard the constellations sing to him with thin, ethereal voices, a nameless song of the cosmos that came to him from the depths of time and space. The trail could barely be seen any more in the meager gleam of their lantern. Enim was grateful when the moon rose, pale and impossibly big, over the ragged line of the mountains. They trotted on, bathed in the silvery silence that now covered rocks and meadows.

Suddenly, the cart came to a halt.

Enim startled. He reigned in, then rode up front to see what was the matter.

His gaze hardly found the outlines in the darkness of the valley.

It was only a few huts at first, huddling against the slope. But farther on, they condensed into a thick crowd of buildings, a black tangle, a confusing shadow full of nooks and edges in the ghostly moonlight. Over to one side of the valley, lights were visible, and shapes of stone houses with hearth fires shining through their windows. Enim let out a deep breath.

"Shebbetin," his guide said in a hushed voice, as if she too felt she was standing at a portal between two worlds.

Enim gazed down at the jumbled town. He could not really see or understand it, in the middle of night and darkness. He knew that. But still. Here it was. He took another long look at the mysterious life stretching out and hidden before his eyes.

Gently, he pressed the flanks of his horse and rode down into the unknown.

* * *

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a/n:
So, what do you think?
You're coming?   ;-)