Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In search of Darkness’ Love

Book 2 of Darkness’ Love

By N. A Burnham

Chapter 1

I woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling.  It was not man-made, but instead appeared to be natural stone.  I furrowed my brow in confusion, the colours were washed out indicating that it was pitch black, wherever I was.  I flexed my fingers and wiggled my toes experimentally.  Everything felt stiff and very very sore.  I groaned as a headache started to form.

‘Shard,’ I called out, but there was no answer, no reassuring presence.

“Shard?” I whispered croakily, my voice harsh, hoarse and weak.

Tears began to stream down my cheeks from the pain, exhaustion and fear.  Speaking brought on a coughing fit that jarred the muscles in my chest and my back.  I rolled onto my side to curl up, to seek comfort in myself.  The stone I was lying on was hard and I realised in rolling that I was naked.  A cave stretched out in front of me, not extremely large but big enough to hold a house in it.  Stalactites dropped from the ceiling and in places stalagmites rose up to greet them.  A pool of water sat in one corner, still and serene until its surface was broken by a drop of water that caused ripples to spread out in concentric circles.  The roof of the cavern sloped down as it got closer to me so I guessed that I was close to one end of it, a guess I wasn’t quite ready to confirm.  I was thirsty, my mouth and throat felt incredibly dry; and my stomach seemed hollow and empty.  I wondered how long I’d been there for,  but it was only a passing thought at the time, there were more important things to worry about.  More things to worry about.  I brought my left hand up to my right shoulder and felt the skin there.  It was not smooth and unblemished but there was no hole either, it felt like a divot and a dent.  The skin was slightly rougher, as if it had healed naturally and not through the healing magics of divine intervention.  I moved my hand down to my stomach and thigh to find three more of these scarred dents.

It left me wondering who had healed me?  Surely Shard would have healed me up through her own power.  Through the fog of sleep I tried to think back about the last things I could remember.  I could remember the orcs approaching, I could remember their wicked blades poised to end my life.  I could remember reaching for something, reaching for the feeling of a spell that would get me away, get me to Shard.  My eyes widened in shocked realisation.  I had cast Teleport !  A spell of the seventh level of magic that there was no way I was ready or able to cast!  My mind went back to Malkarov’s master, lying in a bed at the Mages Guild unable to respond to anything; effectively dead in every way that mattered.  Did I really cast Teleport ?  Shard!  The last thing I remembered was Shard’s face hovering over me, looking worried, looking afraid.

“Shard!” I called again, worried at the sound of my voice and dismayed at the energy it took. 

I forced my body to move in an attempt to lift myself up, but instead only managed to roll off the stone slab I was lying on.  I fell a couple of feet to the ground with a thud that sent ripples of pain running through my body and causing me to black out from the pain.  

When I came to, I crawled, painfully and slowly towards the pool of water.  With no concept of time, I had no idea how long it took but it seemed forever.  Foot by painful foot I dragged myself along until I reached the smooth incline that formed the bank of the pool.

I was about to take a drink before I paused and quickly thought out a prayer to Tenebrae to purify drink .  A ripple of black light spread across the water and only then did I confidently take a sip.  The water seemed the sweetest thing I had ever drank before, it washed away all of the dryness in my mouth and throat.  It sat heavy in my empty stomach but dismissed some of the emptiness I felt.  I looked back the way I had come and noticed a rough hole behind the smooth stone platform I had woken on.  

I didn’t know how long it was that I laid there, but it was long enough to build up the energy required to stand.  I was shaky and unsteady to begin with, having to brace myself against the wall of the cavern on a couple of occasions.  On unstable, shaky feet I walked to the slab and looked into the tunnel.  It climbed steadily upwards.

Something seemed off, different.  I should have noticed much sooner than I had, but my thoughts seemed to be foggy, slow.  I looked down at my arms, braced on the slab.  They were dirty?  No, not dirty.  It wasn’t random smudge, it was painted on.  Symbols all down my arms and right to my wrists.  They were painted on my skin with some sort of black ink, showing up starkly on my unnaturally pale body.  I reached across to wipe it, but it didn’t smudge, it didn’t wipe away.  I looked down my body and saw that these symbols followed a line along the outsides of my arm to my shoulders and from there travelled down either side of my breasts to cross over my belly button and continue down the outside of my legs.  I didn’t recognise them at all, none of them were the runes Malkarov had taught me.  The line of runes was about three inches wide all along with each line of runes containing nine runes each.

I put aside that mystery for the time being, it was something that I could look into at a later date.

“Shard!” I called out, my throat no longer raspy or hoarse, but still sore.

There was no answer.  Nothing.  

There was nothing else in the cavern for me, so I walked slowly and painfully up the inclining tunnel that continued steadily onwards for about one hundred yards.  The tunnel ended with the roof coming down so that there was only a three foot gap.  I knelt and peered into the narrow gap and noticed that instead of a curved roof, like the tunnel had while going up, the roof of the tunnel’s end was smooth and flat… and black.  I reached my hand in to touch the roof, to feel it.  The instant I touched the smooth black stone, it crumbled into smooth gravel.  Each piece was smaller than a copper bit and I was able to reach in and scrape it out into the tunnel.  Once I had the last bit scraped out, I crawled into the tunnel on my back to look up into the hole that had been created.  The hole seemed to open up into a huge cavern!  Vaguely I could see lights off in the distance, but they seemed a long long way away.  I crawled further into the gap until I was able to stand up in the hole and when I did I realised how silly I was.  The hole opened up after only a few feet into a clearing in a forest!  I turned around to find which direction Luna was shining from and realised with a dreadful sinking feeling that I knew exactly the clearing I was in.  

It was Shard’s clearing and I had just swept down a tunnel, the remains of Shard’s altar!

“Shard!” I cried out as a gut-wrenching pain ripped through me and I collapsed down to cry.

What had happened? Where was she?  With her altar gone, was she… dead? Gone?

Questions swirled around and around as I sobbed in despair.  Eventually my despair was replaced by Shard’s face, Shard’s smiling face, frowning face, angry face, surprised face.  As I closed my eyes I could picture her and in doing so I managed to gain back some measure of strength.  Enough to stop crying at least.  Enough to force back the near overwhelming despair that I felt.

I stood up and reached up to lift myself out of the tunnel, in my weakened state it was difficult but I did manage it in the end.  I made my way through the forest towards the farm, hopeful that at least someone would be there that could tell me what had happened, or at least how long I had been underground for.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I got to the edge of the forest.  The barley we had sowed would have been ready to harvest just after Mari’s wedding day, but now it was all pale and dead, stalks collapsed onto the soil.  The long grain took much longer to grow and was now not far off harvest, with weeds poking up here and there that Father would have never allowed.  I mentally ran through the months and realised with a shock that it had to have been somewhere around High Summer!  That meant that I had to have been down in that cave for at least three months!  More distressingly was the fact that the barley hadn’t actually been harvested!

Did Malkarov fail?  Was it all for nothing?  What happened to my family?

I rushed forward through the field towards the farmhouse to find a strange sight.  Skeletons, partially covered by lacquered leather, littered the ground outside of the house.  Four of them lay there in different positions.  Their skulls and frames were much too big for human, they were obviously orcs, picked over and eaten by scavengers until nothing but bones and armour remained.  I wondered at the lack of weapons nearby and concluded that they were likely taken by whoever killed them.  Frantically I ran into the house and looked around.  I could find no more bodies, thankfully, but did see the signs of a hurried escape.  Food was still on the table covered in furry mould, the fire long ago abandoned.  I looked for clothes first and found one of Mother’s dresses in her and Father’s room and some jars of preserved and dried foods in one of the cupboards.  I greedily ate some preserved cabbage.  Further searching revealed some of Father’s cured meats, which I eagerly took.  I took a pack to store the food and prepared to head towards town.

The stable was empty and the cattle long dead or gone, so I began the walk along the road towards Easthaven.  I didn’t see a living soul the entire way to the mouth of the valley that marked Easthaven township.  But that was where things changed.

There was a small lean-to constructed beside the road and in it were two sleeping orcs.  I froze instantly and became aware that something must have gone terribly wrong.  It was a horribly distressing scene to see the orcs there, it meant that everything had changed.

I heard a growl and momentarily looked around before I realised that I was the one making the sound.  It was a feral noise and bespoke of an anger and animal viciousness that I wasn’t aware I had.

I was lifting my hand up to my mouth when magic missile sprung out of my palm without even a conscious desire to cast it!  Eight bolts of magic went whizzing off towards the two sleeping orcs, spinning in a spiral only to split off and hit both of them.

I looked at my hand in shock.  I hadn’t even summoned the spell!  The magical signature that made each spell different didn’t well up inside me!  All I knew was that I wanted those two orcs dead.

And magic took care of that for me.

At merely a thought, I became invisible and strode confidently towards Malkarov’s tower.  Orcs were everywhere !  Too many to count, they had made themselves at home in the houses of the townspeople.  They had turned Easthaven into their own town!  There obviously weren’t enough houses for them, for they had set up tents on the Commons Paddock and sat around fires drinking and fighting.  Everywhere I looked there were orcs!  I made it over the bridge without hassle and walked up to Malkarov’s tower, hoping that it was unspoiled.

I couldn’t tell if the door had ever been opened, but it was presently closed with a guard leaning against it sleeping.  It didn’t wake when I slipped its dagger out of the sheath on its belt and it would never wake again when I pushed that dagger through its ear with a strength reinforced by the anger I felt at their interloping.

I used mage hand to open the door, once again without thought, and strode into the tower.  I closed the door behind me and let out a sigh.  The ground floor was untouched.  I thanked Tenebrae for whatever luck had prevented the orcs from entering and ran up the stairs to my bedroom.  I opened the door to the room not at all as I had left it.

For on my unmade bed lay my staff, sword, trousers, tunic and vest.  The trousers had two neat holes in the legs as did the tunic and vest.  All of the holes were stained around with the reddish brown of dried blood.

‘How?’ I wondered to myself.

Not only those things of mine, but also a piece of parchment, a note.  I picked it up and realised immediately that it wasn’t written in Malkarov’s chicken scratch handwriting, but in a neat flowing script that was likely Alladrial’s.

Dear Sharein,

I am writing in the hope that you are not dead and that you will return here.  We failed.  I am unsure what happened, but while I concentrated on my spell, Malkarov was enchanting the wall and was struck by a crossbow bolt.  Some of the orcs had spotted us and their attack was enough to disrupt my spell and Malkarov’s work.  We managed to kill the orcs that were left, but when we investigated your location all we could find were these things on the bed.  We called to Shard, unsure if she could hear us, but she didn’t respond.  I brought Malkarov and your things back here and I intend to take him through to Kaz Sarion.  He needs healing, special healing and that was the only place I felt that I could take him.  I intend to come back through our portal to get some of Malkarov’s things, but then to close the portal permanently.  If you are alive and do read this note, know that you will be welcome to join us in Sarillion .

Yours 

Alladrial Li’Falandaralithial Na’Kaz Sarion

I decided to spend as much time as I could gathering things from Malkarov’s tower, I knew that he wouldn’t begrudge me that.  To that end I wrote out the room scheme for the bell enchantment we had used to prank Father Mattias and put it at the foot of the door.  Penning out that rune scheme and enchanting it gave me a wicked idea, one that would take a while to enact but could potentially allow me a measure of revenge.

Thankfully Alladrial had not taken all of Malkarov’s enchanting ink and there were plenty of parchment and enchanting tools still around.  More importantly, were Malkarov’s books on enchanting.

My plan was simple.  I knew that I could enchant a piece of parchment to ring a bell, all I had to do was figure out how to make the rune explode.  Malkarov had long ago mentioned the possibility and had told me that it was a favourite sort of trap in ancient temples, ruins and the like.  A search through Malkarov’s books revealed the answer, an enchantment called Explosive Runes (Touched) .  Curiously there was another rune scheme for Explosive Runes (Read) , whereby you wrote words over the top of the rune scheme and when those words were read, the enchantment would activate.   I spent an entire evening copying out the enchantment onto pieces of parchment and in the end had almost eighty separate pieces of parchment enchanted.  After enchanting so many I could feel the depletion of magic inside me but when each one activated I would get the magic back so I wasn’t too worried.  With the knowledge that Malkarov was safe, if injured, I worried more about my family and how they were.  I relied on the fact that it wasn’t Mother’s first time fleeing certain death and with this thought a realisation struck me.

Mother fleeing from certain death.  Mother’s story!  That’s right!

Prior to coming to Easthaven, my Grandmother had prayed at an altar exactly the same as Shard’s in Allarth.  Hope swelled up inside me, burst inside me with such explosive force that I felt even a little giddy!  Even though Shard’s altar here was destroyed, perhaps she remained linked to the other one?  I needed to find Mother to find out where exactly the other altar was, perhaps Grandmother had told her?  

I had a goal!

I had a goal and while I felt the pull to follow that thread, I needed to finish what I was planning in Easthaven first.  

A quick check from the roof of the tower revealed that the orcs were much more active during night time, with the vast majority sleeping during the day.  Easthaven seemed to be a staging point; for during the night, orcs trickled in from the south in small groups and a group of fifty orcs departed to the north.  Shortly after the orcs departed to the north, one came running back and ran straight into the Pig and Wheelbarrow.  I wondered if this meant that the orc in charge was staying there and straight away it became my priority for the morning.

I slept well and awoke when the sun started to shine.  I hoped that this meant the orcs were starting to sleep.  Nothing had gotten into Malkarov’s tower during the night, so I wasn’t sure what had come of the discovery of the guards to the north.  Looking down from the roof of the tower I could see that the same orc I had killed the day before was still lying down at the door.  I wondered at the intelligence of leaving the same orcs guarding the same place for what seemed to be at least an entire day, but I wouldn’t look past good fortune.

I readied myself and just before opening the door I cast invisibility on myself.  To begin with I snuck down towards the church, put one of the pieces of parchment on the ground and covered it with dirt.  I then did the same near the door of the church.  I followed this method across the bridge then up and down the road.  Simply putting down these pieces of parchment didn’t dismiss my invisibility , so I could keep it up for a while. 

My biggest worry was, of course, that an orc would happen to step on one of the runes before I had finished.  Then everything would happen all at once while I was out in the open.  Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any orcs patrolling, most seemed either asleep or drinking and fighting on the Common’s Paddock.  This made things so much easier for me as I was able to cover all eighty pieces of parchment.  Once I had finished that, I began enchanting doors of houses, crates and barrels of food and equipment.  Enchanting the first door did drop my invisibility spell and I had to be extremely careful as I moved.  I knew that orcs could see in darkness but I didn’t know how their vision worked during daylight, would they be able to see through shadows?  I tried to keep to them nonetheless.  There were a number of crossbows left leaning against the front walls of houses and they made perfect targets.  My luck remained true and the last thing I did before casting invisibility again and sneaking back to Malkarov’s tower was to ensure the whole thing was set off. 

I had placed one piece of parchment on the road in front of the Common’s Paddock and so when I reached the bridge I summoned Tenebrae’s gift to me and summoned a semi-sphere of darkness on the parchment.  I didn’t wait and watch for the result, instead I hurried towards Malkarov’s tower.  Once inside I climbed all of the way up the stairs and quietly opened the trapdoor.  I worried that something had gone wrong, did the orcs not notice or did the enchantment not work?  I peeked over the edge and peered down towards the paddock.  The sphere of darkness was surrounded by orcs, who were not curious or brave enough to venture inside of it.  They were poking it with their swords and then one brave orc put its hand into the darkness.  They seemed to be arguing about something, perhaps the best course of action?  One was pointing over the river towards the church and another was pointing at the Pig and Wheelbarrow.  Others were arguing amongst themselves hopefully to see who would be the one to venture inside.  Their argument seemed to rouse another orc from one of the tents, slightly smaller than the rest who appeared to question them.  The arguments stopped and they gestured for the smaller orc to come closer.  I watched the small orc come closer and when it reached the others one of them sprung forward and grabbed hold of the smaller orc!  The small orc was picked bodily up and thrown into the darkness!  Still there was no explosion and I growled in frustration.  Where did I go wrong?

The orcs surrounding the darkness seemed to be eagerly awaiting something and all reacted simultaneously to something, laughing and clapping each other on the back.

Then the explosion happened!  The fiery blast looked extremely strange, spreading out from the dome of darkness and it ripped through all of the orcs who had surrounded it!  They were all blown backwards about ten feet and the sound of the explosion reverberated through the valley.  A ripple of excitement spread through me and I waited eagerly with baited breath.  Three other explosions seemed to happen at the same time, one near the Pig and Wheelbarrow and two farther to the south.  Then four more one after the other, then they just seemed to happen continuously and it seemed to go on forever!  Wood from the houses was being blown out and upwards, with some houses catching on fire.  Clouds of dust were being blown up, covering most of the city. Trails of smoke started appearing through the dust cloud and yet still more explosions were occurring!

When the explosions started to die down there would be a pause before another explosion sounded somewhere around the town then a longer pause, then another single explosion.  When the quiet began to stretch for longer and longer, the dust started to clear.  I looked down upon a wasteland.  The houses were mostly destroyed, the road had great black blast marks all over it, smoke was rising out of the rubble all over the town.  Aside from the smoke there was not a single sign of movement.  Charred orc bodies lay on the ground or mixed into the rubble all over town.  I don’t know how long I stood there in shock, just looking from body to body to body.  Then there was movement.  Slowly, tentatively, the two orc guards from the northern valley entrance had made their way along the road.  They had caught sight of the destruction and had obviously heard the explosions and seen the smoke.  Yet they did not know the cause.  They crept forward and paused, crept forward and paused.  I frowned, I was sure that I had planted another piece of parchment where they were standing.  When they crept forward again they stepped on it and boom!   Both orcs were thrown up into the air by the fiery explosion!  I smiled to myself at the job well done, the entire town had been cleansed.

I packed my bag and gathered everything that I might need.  Before I left I wrote a note to Malkarov and left it on his bed,  describing what I had done and suggesting that before letting anybody come back into the village that they check for enchanted parchment that may not have been set off.  Once that was all done, I took a round of cheese from one of the cupboards in the kitchen and two of his books that contained rune schemes and I left his tower. 

My plan was to head north out of the valley and then turn left towards Easthaven.  Now that the orcs had broken through, they must be aiming for the north; for the Irongap Mountains.  But they would have to set up a line to the west to protect them from counter-attack from Carnian forces.  Unless they had managed to distract the Carnian armies enough with an attack through the main pass?  In any case, I needed to find Mother.  She would have answers.  The most likely place for them to be, for everyone to be, was Sunhaven.  To get there I would have to travel through lands held by orcs and then likely cross over the lines held by each army.  I followed the road out of Easthaven, but when I turned left I turned before the main Sunhaven road and instead walked through the fields.  When the woods took over from the fields, I walked through the trees while keeping an eye on the road.  I stopped when I saw redcap mushrooms growing that Malkarov would have wanted harvested for material components, but forced myself to continue.  I did not have the time, or the need.  Although once I made it to a city, I would probably need money and I could probably sell them to another wizard…   I half turned to head back, but decided that I would stop for the next thing that I saw.  It made for slower going,  but the components could provide money and the money could provide food in the future.  I had started to amass a collection of different things before I realised that I didn’t have pockets, pouches or bags to carry each separate thing in and decided to dump most of them in favour of collecting only two things; red cap mushrooms and skeletal ivy leaves.  The mushrooms would need to be dried before use, but I thought that someone might want to buy them to dry themselves.  Skeletal Ivy Leaves I remembered seeing in the Mages Guild Shop with a price of one silver moon per leaf.  These I stored between the pages of one of Malkarov’s books.  With my careful and slow going, it was late afternoon before I got close to Sunhaven and saw a line of orcs crossing the road and stretching towards the mountains in the north.  They had chopped down trees in the woods and built a spiked wall to hide behind.  I snuck through the woods to see if the wall continued to the south and was dismayed to find that it did.  The orcs had cut down a great swathe of trees a hundred yards wide and built their wall ten yards in from the edge of it.  This meant that any attackers would have to run across ninety yards of open ground to get to the wall and the orcs guarding the wall all seemed to be equipped with crossbows.  Although the orcs seemed spread out along the line, every hundred yards or so was a small camp holding another group of orcs.  I estimated that, in just the small section that I could see, there were around one hundred orcs and I shuddered to think how many were actually guarding this line.  Not only this line though; if there were thousands of orcs guarding the line north to south through Carn, how many were attacking the Irongap Mountains?  How many had made it through?  They were not my problem though and I focussed instead on the one at hand.  How to get past them.

I could try to sneak past with invisibility , but there did not seem to be a big enough gap in guards.  I would have to be as quiet as possible too and hope that nothing saw my footprints in the mud or grass.  I could try to cause a disruption in one part of the wall in the hopes that all of the orcs rushed there?  I could try to just destroy one part and try to rush through, but that immediately sounded like a bad idea.  I’d been punctured by crossbow bolts enough to last me a lifetime.   I was about a hundred yards from the road and right next to one of the small camps that had been set up inside a clearing cut out of the woods.  Tents littered the clearing and all of the camp itself was extremely quiet (likely with all of its occupants asleep) the orcs guarding the wall were all paying attention to what was on the other side of the wall.  The fact that the clearing was cut out of the forest also meant that it was completely hidden from most of the rest of the wall.

When the idea struck I found myself musing, “I wonder…”

‘Only one way to find out,’ I answered myself.

Three elemental explosion spells were enough to kill everything in the camp and because they made no sound, I was able to cast each one without even being noticed!  Next I cast manipulate elements and when I did I was able to feel the presence of each of the fifty orc bodies in the camp.  I did not think that I would be able to handle all of them, but was pleased to discover that I was able to keep twenty manipulate elements spells going at once!  Twenty orc bodies crawled out of their tents and twenty orc bodies took up torches that rested next to their tents and lit them in the closest of the many fires burning around the camp.  The orcs on the wall still hadn’t noticed them.  I knew that I had to be very close to them to instruct them, so I cast invisibility and followed closely behind as they all strode purposefully towards the wall.  When the first of the orcs on the wall noticed them, I had them run.  Their movements were jerky and awkward, but their pace did quicken.  Each of the twenty orcs crashed into either an orc guard or the wall in a line one hundred feet long.  Those that crashed into orc guard didn’t seem to do much damage in the crashing, but that’s when something curious did actually happen.  When the orcs crashed, they often dropped their lit torches.  Sometimes they fell on the ground and sometimes they fell on the orc guard, but when they fell on the “zombie” orc… Whoosh!   The orc lit up in flames in an instant!

My manipulate elements spell turned them into husks, literally.  They were dried up, containing still the fats and oils but none of the moisture.  The orc zombies that caught on fire burned the guards they had crashed into.  The orc zombies that continued running to the wall, began burning the wall.  Soon orcs were running around on fire and the wall itself was ablaze for a hundred feet!  I backed away slowly as other orcs came rushing from the north and south to see what was going on.  I disappeared back into the trees and made my way back towards the road.  When I got there it appeared as though most of the orcs guarding the road had left to see what the fuss was to the south and I was able to perfectly repeat exactly what I had just done.  There were less orc guards (as most had gone to the south), so the fire spread along a much larger portion of the wall.  Very soon two portions of the wall were on fire and orcs were running around everywhere.  There was not sufficient water around to put out the fires and in places orcs attempted to push portions of the wall over in order to stop the fire from spreading.  

I was hiding among the trees when I first heard it.

A clear resonant call, a tone that cut through all of the bustle and frantic effort at the wall; a clarion call that bespoke solidarity of effort of hope and blood and death.  It was not a sound I had heard before, but had heard described and even then it took a few moments for me to put things together.  The Carnian soldiers had seen the wall on fire with parts of it being knocked over and had taken advantage of the opportunity that had presented itself.  They appeared to be attacking in two prongs towards the fires, for the orcs began to mass at these locations.  It was difficult for them, for they had no wish to stand too close to the fire.  I moved cautiously closer and cast elemental explosion at the mass of orc invaders.  The orcs on the other side of the flames loosed their crossbows and I cast another elemental explosion spell at them as they reloaded.  Orcs were rushing towards the point of attack from the north but I didn’t believe they would make it in time.  

My guess proved correct when a sphere of earth burst through the flaming wall sending parts of the palisade flying through the air!  There was a Carnian War-Wizard on the other side!  

Through the hole they burst!  Knight after knight on horseback streamed through the gap and split left and right once through.  After them came soldiers in chainmail with high tower shields and long swords.  The knights rode down the orcs behind the palisade wall, skewering them on long spears or trampling them to death under steel shod hooves. 

The Carnian soldiers had spread out, away from the gap in front of me, so I cast invisibility once more and strode confidently through the hole in the wall pushing back the growing headache that indicated that I was coming close to magical exhaustion again.  I didn’t want to risk that again, not with the price so high from the last time it happened.  

The grass beside the road ahead was torn up and muddy with the charging of the horses and off in the distance I could see the tents of the Carnian Army.  It was towards that camp that I aimed to walk, hopefully there would be someone there that I could talk to about Easthaven.