The Book of Terrus: The Ghosts of Goran

Chapter 20 - Until You Are Warm Again

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They left Geristan with little more fanfare than with which they had left Vaelona. Awenis had been hesitant even to leave so much as a note for Thanic, the tailor. In the end, they locked up their tiny home and left the key beneath the mat. They each carried only as much as they could carry in a rough cloth sack. Jatheryn's viol was too large for his bag, and so instead he rigged it to his shoulders with a string harness.

At the city gates Jatheryn pulled up on Nightwish's reins to look back. Geristan was just as grey and plain as they had found it. There was warmth there though, and company, all tucked safely inside, beneath roofs blanketed with thick white snow. Before them the road stretched bleakly into the distance. They had only been in Geristan for five months, yet Jatheryn had never looked back when they left Vaelona.

In front of him, Awenis fidgeted. The folds of her thick winter cloak caught the wind and peeled back away from her swelling stomach.

"Are you sure about this, Awenis?" Jatheryn had to ask one more time.

"I'm sure," Awenis insisted, ever stubborn. "They say it never snows in the east, and that even the deepest nights of winter are temperate. Won't that be a sight?"

Jatheryn shrugged the hood of his cloak off his head, letting a few snowflakes catch and stick to his forehead. "I myself have never minded snow."

Small mittens touched Jatheryn's hands. Awenis rested her hands on his for a moment before gently tugging the reins out of his grasp. Without any further delay, she urged Nightwish on down the long road toward The Teeth.

Geristan sat only half a day's ride from the mouth of The Old Mountain Road, the only passage through the mountains from west to east. By the time the sun rode high in the sky they were already so close to The Teeth that Jatheryn had to crane his neck to look up at them. Warmer winds from the south came to chase away the clouds. Towering granite peaks soared up into a pale blue sky, where they pierced the clouds like needles through cotton. The enormity of the mountains clenched Jatheryn's lungs with awe.

"I wonder if our ancestor, Taebor Saurivic, ever looked up at The Teeth and felt—"

"Small?" Awenis finished for him.

"Small, but also inspired. They make me want to write music about them. I also can't help but wonder what someone like Lord Taebor would have thought of us, his descendants."

"I don't know, Jath. But you know what?"

"What?"

There was a note of defiance in Awenis's voice from in front of Jatheryn. "I don't care what he or any other of our ancestors would have thought. They made us, so they can bloody well either be proud or go and eat barnyard dirt!"

"Awenis!" Jatheryn exclaimed. "Where did you learn language like that?"

"From Thanic." Now Awenis sounded downright pleased with herself. "That's one of the milder words, actually."

"Where is my sweet, silly little sister?" Jatheryn mourned aloud.

"This growing babe ate her for nourishment. Now you will both just have to live with me, its peasant of a mother."

Their laughter, high and low, rang out across the foothills and echoed back at them off the sheer faces of The Teeth. A flock of starlings huddled in the frosty brambles of a nearby thicket startled and took flight. Nightwish tossed her blue-black mane nearly into Awenis's face, as if telling them to pipe down.