Mist settled on the Sabanes mountains when Ravel reached the area he had chosen to begin his preparations. His journey had taken half the time to return as it had to reach Swardlock and his supplies had dwindled to a mere few days rations. His pace across the plains had left no time to supplement his meals with game, resting only for short bursts and trusting the stamina of his body and the Mark. It was simpler though as the scarcity of their supplies during his exodus with those he freed had demanded more foraging and hunting. On his departure from the city though, he had raided a goodly store of victuals.
Adjar had been relentless in his thrusts against his cage that held him in Ravel’s mind, at times forcing his rest earlier than he would wish, but he would not submit to the being and he was aware that weariness would weaken his mental defenses as well as his physical ones.
The demon lay silent though except for those assaults against the bonds Ravel wished he knew how break. No pleading or bargaining for favors came from the being that had been his hallmark of their early entanglement. Ravel realized that the demon had been silent since the debacle with Jorsec in the sorcerer’s pens.
Ravel worried that the consumption of those demons in the bowels of the sorcerer’s fortress had strengthened his own prisoner. It occurred to him as well that Adjar might consider him to be the prisoner, but it mattered little to his current goals. Dealing with him could wait. Sarnon was the only thing that mattered him now and recompense for the wrongs done.
The Elilyos were silent now, too. Well for the most part. They had argued with him the first few days of into his escape. That is how he thought of it. The priests of Swardlock would not have permitted him to leave willingly. He was an anomaly they would not permit to evade study. But his path was already set, set the moment his walked into the daylight not a day’s walk from this very wood. The sorcerer would pay: Pay for his actions and Ravel’s actions in escaping him.
Pride took the longest to drift off. The Elil had led him for the first weeks on the correct path, attempting to dissuade him the entire way while navigating to the point which he could pick out the landmarks he had noted on his departure from the Sabanes range. Finally it seemed the others had convinced Pride to leave him be and that he was not one worthy of conversation anymore.
He could still see the glow of the spirits circling the trees behind and around him and hear them whispering just out of earshot. Every now and then he caught a scrap of conversation but the words “foolish” and “stubborn” seemed to dominate those exchanges. The slight whisper continued through his entire journey, not the compelling beckoning that brought him to them in the desert. It was a conspiratorial whispering that left worrying about the loss of his allies. It was not as though they could aid him where he was going anyway, not with the sorcerer’s Jackal warriors of the ability to sense and destroy them.
The tricks of his Mark had given him the stamina to travel night and day for the past weeks to reach the mountain he had marked so assiduously in his memory during his departure. The nearly vertical north face with the indention one hundred paces from the top and the south face the showed a descending stair of rock ending in a graceful slope was as clear to him when it came into sight as it was when he had begun to set it in his mind. He referred to it as the Keep Peak despite hearing its real name given by the Warden of the Lock. He hadn’t need the other landmarks he had marked at all. The Triplets to the south he had named them rose twice as tall as the Keep Peak, but they were diminished in his mind to mere insect mounds next to it.
The northern peaks were taller then Sarnon’s mountain as well. It was once the guardian of the only pass within six hundred kilometers to the north and the south, a safe-house for those heading west from the dangers of the passes and launching point for the journey into the east, but now the malice it held seemed to pervert the once welcoming hostel.
Despite the haze and fog he immediately began to scout the area for a suitable refuge should things go awry. By his third night in the area he had established a second refuge an equal distance from the passage to the south, taking care to avoid the Jackal scouts. He rested during daylight and used the Mark’s night sight to reconnoiter the in and out of his camps. He refused to set up food snares out of wariness for the patrols as well, but his slower pace and growing familiarity with this area allowed him to gather victuals and game. On the evening of his fifth day he felt his preparations were sufficient for any needed escape. On the morrow, he would find his way to Sarnon’s heart. Only then could he rest.
