Chapter Forty Nine: Traversing the Bridge

Something shook at Calin’s shoulder. But he didn’t want to wake up. It was too early in the morning. Miserably he realized his body was aching all over.

As if a shock renewed his memory, His eyes flashed open. He spun around to dazedly see a face hovering over him. He tried to shield from it with his hands as the blurred image made his head throb. “Calin, are you okay?” The image said. It sounded familiar.

Shaking his head to clear it he slowly regained focus in his eyes and there hovering above him was Christoff. With a welcome intake of breath, Calin got up on his haunches and accepted the hand of the gypsy. While he got back on his feet, he asked, “Christoff, I should be the one to ask if you are alright, especially after the attacks on the caravan.”

The middle aged gypsy smirked as he helped Calin to the floating caravan.

“Thanks to you and Mictoria I’ll live to tell about it. I went back to repair her caravan. But I thought you were in prison, Nísir?”

“Yeah, yeah I was,” Calin stammered as he settled on the caravan. “Mictoria gave a helping hand there too. But listen, we have to get over the bridge. Ta-Reen took Evany!”

As Calin said that, the gypsy’s face went dark as a cloud. But after a nod of understanding Christoff jumped up and powered the Floating Caravan forward. “Hold on Nísir!”

Ready this time, he held on to the leather straps while they drifted past the canopy of the Morning trees. Just then he shuddered at the death defying leap he had taken from the window that now loomed almost two hundred metres above him.

For a terrifying moment he realized he was an escapee now, a fugitive. Even though he was completely innocent, it sent a feeling of doubt through him. But this was all for Evany.

He threw up the hood from his cloak and said, “Christoff when you get through the doors of Yera’s Crossing, you shoot for the bridge. My bet is Mictoria is already on her way over... Is there somewhere I can hide inside the caravan?”

The gypsy nodded all the while as he powered up the road against the colossal stone pillar.

“Yes Nísir, at the right corner of the bed, there is a small wooden knot. Press it and crawl in the space it reveals. I’ll call when we are safely over the bridge.”

He was already down the iron ladder of the trap door as Christoff said the last. He stumbled inside the caravan towards the bed.

Reaching the corner, he had to look carefully for the knot. It took him a minute before he found it. He pressed it, and a board in the floor next to the bed shifted to the side. Calin shoved at it and found a relatively large hidden compartment; filled with a wide assortment of things he had no name for. It ranged from, rocks with markings on them to plants and herbs that were probably used for potions and salves.

The rest he couldn’t even figure out what they were before he laid down in the most comfortable place. It wasn’t enough as several of the things in the compartment were poking at places that still hurt from the fall.

Lying on his back, he slid the floor board back over him into place and pressed up. The board clicked into its original position. It was not a place to be for someone who didn’t like small spaces. Though, he didn’t have a choice in the matter. There was a slight gap, just under the bed, that gave a little fresh air. But that was it.

Calin tried to get the picture of a coffin out of his head as the caravan came to a halt, but was only partly successful. His breathing was becoming faster as the natural urge to panic at being trapped settled over him.

Over head, there was a muffled call from beyond the large wooden doors. “Who seek sanctuary behind the tree?” it sounded even more eerie through the wood.

Then from somewhere above, Christoff said, “Those who hide from the crimson sun.”

The caravan lurched forward and it settled some of Calin’s nerves, though not nearly enough. It was maddening to be hiding and not be able to see what was going on outside. That alongside the image of Evany being thrown into the back of Ta-Reen’s carriage, kept him on edge as it ran over and over in his mind.

All of a sudden, there were muffled shouts all around the caravan and it came to a halt. There was the clear formal voice of a guard saying. “Open up your caravan Master gypsy, if the prisoners aren’t hiding with you, you can go on your way.”

It was enough to block out everything Christoff said as Calin’s heart started hammering away in his chest. The door’s lock slid against its metal trappings and the door creaked open. There were several hard thuds as the sure sound of metal clinking against metal from the armour clad figures echoed through the small room.

A few more steps and then the guard came to a stop on the very board that he was lying under. His heart shuddered.

He held his breath.

The guard that was right above him bent down. An armoured knee thudded to the floor. Or so Calin thought with terror in his heart.

Without warning there were loud thuds and then it disappeared. The guards had left.

His breath whooshed out of him as one of the guards outside spoke.

“Mighty sorry for the inconvenience Master gypsy, but one can never be too sure what they would do to get free. You can go on your way then. If you are going to the Crossing of Kailuvia, then take this to the bridge keeper.”

“No problem, my thanks to you.” Christoff said, and Calin would’ve sworn there was relief in the man’s words. I can totally relate to that.

With the guards leaving, the caravan swept forward.

***

It was a few minutes before there was a shout from above. “Who wishes to use the Crossing of Kailuvia?”

There was a rattling of something close by and then Christoff said, “It is I Christoff, I come bearing the sigil of the great Nasyri house of Ayelet... My compatriots seemed to have left earlier. I wish to catch up to them master bridge keeper. This is the permission from the captain of the guard.”

There were several shouts of a word Calin couldn’t quite comprehend and then there was a sound of something massive shifting. If the caravan had been grounded like everything else, he was sure a tremendous tremor would have run through it from the sounds that came from below. He quickly surmised they had raised the bridge when the alarm had gone off from Prison’s hold about the escapees.

The caravan started to move again and it wasn’t more than two minutes before Christoff shouted from above. “You can come up Nísir.”

Getting out of the confined space couldn’t happen fast enough. He pressed on the board, but it wouldn’t budge.

Panic surged in him as he desperately tried to open the compartment. But just as he was about to shout out to Christoff, something clicked in the board and it came loose. Calin shoved it to the side with force, sat up and gulped in a deep breath of air. What is it with me ending up in a coffin like place?

He shook his head and got up. After a little effort, he reached the fresh air outside. The caravan was gliding through a partial mist and slipped from the edge of the bridge.

In front of them stood two huge towers, clearly built for watching over the pathway that led deep into the cliff face and into the mountains.

He pulled the hood further over his face and looked down over the side of the broad bridge. Somewhere hundreds of metres below flowed the river that nurtured Yera’s Crossing.

Past the towers, they slipped through a pathway in a small piece of forest leading up between two rock faces enveloped by a natural rock arch over top.

Out of the silent night air there was loud rumbling noises echoing against the sheer cliff, Calin spun back to see four thick ropes, several metres thick, pulled at the immensely heavy bridge. The bridge was a pure granite slab, and for a moment he marvelled at how on earth they even budged the thing, never mind lifting it.

As the bridge was lifted, it displaced the mist that wanted to form and the massive branches of the great Morning tree at the heart of Yera’s Crossing became visible again. The branches reached out above the walls of city as a mother holding her children. It was fitting as he remembered the story Eli had told him.

A deep breath escaped his lips as he looked at the great Morning tree and asked, “Christoff, have you heard the story of the Morning tree of Yera’s Crossing?”

The gypsy was pressing the caravan as fast as it could go through the pass. But he said, “Yerandier’s Embrace in the ancient tongue of the region. But sadly most call it the Watching Tree now, a shame really. If you ask me Nísir the original name has so much power to it. It was a name of might fitting for its city... But of this region maybe not as mighty as Lunia’z SamBria in my opinion, Nísir.”

He regarded the gypsy with a raised eyebrow. “What is that uh lueSambriach or whatever you just said?”

The gypsy laughed and pointed forward to the end of the narrow ravine and said, “It’s ‘Lunia’z SamBria’. When we exit there, you will see, Nísir.”

Grumbling as much with curiosity as the frustration, he wished that the caravan could move faster. For Calin the gypsy reminded him all too much about Tyas, always secretive. There was an air of doubt if such a trait could be trusted in either men. But on the same hand he felt infinitely safer with Christoff; he had saved the man’s life.

“Christoff tell me something, is Yerandier’s Embrace the only Morning tree with that pink cherry blossom colour?”

The gypsy turned an inquisitive face to him and smiled before he nodded his head.

“It is my understanding that it is indeed the only one with that colour, Nísir. But there are many stories of other rare Morning trees that took on different colours from the two… well, one can say three common colours. My people used to set out to discover the story and mystery of each of those trees.”

“Used to?” Calin asked softly.

“Yes. It seems there are those who dream of the years just before the Guardians War, the days of power and riches. They have forgotten what the heart of our race is. Now only Mictoria, I and a few others remember that truth. We still search for those beautiful and unique mysteries of the world. I have been lucky enough to guide her caravan through her many adventures.”

The road opened suddenly, there was a piece of forest in a small valley that was surrounded on every side with sheer mountains that reached into the sky, they looked impassable to say the least, but when the notion came that it was what Christoff had referred to, he quickly realized he was so very wrong.

Calin followed the gypsie’s gaze up. High in the sky, a huge shining object that almost looked like the moon, hung kilometres up in the air. Though, it was much dimmer and a bit smaller. Which made him glance back to mark the real moon. It was still there. His mouth sprung open as he looked back and asked, “What in heaven’s name is that?”

Christoff turned to Calin and smiled. “It is Lunia’z SamBria, the second moon of Sambria. It’s been there for thousands of years. Or so at least goes the tales. Some mad stories say there use to be three, but you might as well believe in people that fly. But it is mighty, no? It is as part of my peoples’ history as Yerandier’s Embrace is to those of the Pillar City.”

Staring in wonder, he just nodded away. His understanding of the natural world would never be the same again. He was not able to take his eyes off of it.

It fascinated him to no end. It clearly wasn’t in space, but hanging several kilometres up in the sky above the mountain range in the distance.

How it got up there, was the first question popping into his mind. He was about to ask the many questions he had.

But when he looked at Christoff, the gypsie’s smile had disappeared. A dark look adorned his face.

“Nísir, there they are.”

Down at a clearing in the forested valley, there were more than twenty Floating Caravans standing in a face off position; with most appearing to have just arrived. Gypsies were jumping off their perches.

Calin turned serious, forgetting completely about the second moon of Sambria.

Evany, I’m coming to get you...