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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2008 All Rights Reserved
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122
 Making your way outside you call Pallenten and mount. You wave farewell and turn to the east as the Maturi Len gestures you to go quickly. Looking around the deserted village you see nothing, but high in the trees at the forest's edge you can make out the indistinct forms of three large ravens perched within their branches. For a moment you watch the birds, but they seem as innocuous as the trees themselves, and you wonder if there is really any danger here. It is an uncertainty you decide you do not wish to test.
Prodding Pallenten lightly with your heels the great horse starts forward and quickly clears the village. Leaving the collection of ramshackle buildings behind you rejoin the track eastward. As was the case with your ascent, the trail winds back down through the surrounding forest as a series of shallow declines, the wagon ruts the only indication that a road existed here at all. There are signs however, that this path was once more than the dilapidated track it has become. Protruding from the wet earth you can see the remnants of stone cobbles and a distance marker so worn that it is illegible. Once Kal Arbor must have been a thriving community, this road a vital link to the produce markets of Baellum and Miller's Crossing. You are sure that something happened to change all that, but if there was anywhere in Arborell that an old man might pass unnoticed it was surely in such a place.
As Pallenten follows the rough track you find yourself pondering the memories that your meeting with the Maturi has unearthed. It has been a long time since you have had any need to think on your studies at the Temple. In fact you had only been young, barely nine years old when you had been taken from Truvo farm and deposited at the doorstep of the Temple in Das Frontiere. Why you had been placed there had proven a mystery you could never uncover, but under the guidance of the Maturi you had begun to understand the relationship that existed between EarthMagic and the Dwarvendim who used it. In those early years you had found friends and safety, but it had been short-lived and the hard years that had followed had shrouded most of it from your memory. They had been happy times that you had almost forgotten.
As you travel you wonder at the unusual happenstance of seeing the Maturi, and consider more closely his words on the restoration of the Tellandra. At least in this you have found a solid guide to the completion of your mission to Stoneholme. Now you need only survive to utter the words.
After a while the trees start to thin about you, the trail emerging from the embrace of the forest and cutting a more direct path towards the main road. As you ride you keep a keen eye out for the birds, but see no indication that they have followed you. If they are indeed emissaries of the Kalboreans you are sure that you will see them again. When you reach open ground you urge Pallenten to the gallop and it is just before mid-morning that you reach the fork to Baellum and the road south.
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This book, and its associated books and other documents in the Chronicles of Arborell series are the intellectual property of the author, Wayne F Densley, and all rights are reserved by him. Windhammer is best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution. Any questions regarding the Chronicles of Arborell can be answered by emailing the author at densleyw@shoal.net.au
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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2008 All Rights Reserved
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